


vital signs of life

by Clo



Series: in the wood ash [1]
Category: Star Trek: Discovery
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, F/M, Fix-It, Found Family, Friendship, Post-Canon Fix-It, Slow Burn
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-11
Updated: 2019-06-20
Packaged: 2020-03-01 02:14:01
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 27,394
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18790936
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Clo/pseuds/Clo
Summary: 'Their biggest flaw as a crew at this point is probably that none of them deal well with inaction. Saving their captain right after arriving in the future could be the rallying cry they need. '





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> So who else came out of that s2 finale emotionally compromised? I got a lot of warm fuzzy feelings during s2 but toward the end it was tiring watching fun character interaction having to be shoehorned in around making Terrible Plot Decisions to match up with canon (why would you not just *run away* with your magic spore drive to give yourself enough time to properly build your fantastically-complicated almost-unique time suit instead of trying to fabricate it in a corridor during an actual space battle. Why would you let your improbably-lovely captain sail away toward a terrible fate without allowing anyone to have a grownup-pants conversation about dealing with trauma. WHY. Because whee, trapped on the ferris wheel of canon, that's why) and what started as a quick fix-it turned into... this. After this first one it might be a series if I get my writing act together because apparently some part of me wants to write this crew actually getting some downtime where they're not in a war or being chased by their own evil mirror counterparts or experiencing massive family trauma or- well, you get the point. Burnout is real you bunch of overachieving Starfleet Type As; please eat your vegetables and get some sleep.
> 
> AU notes: This blithely disregards canon from the end of 'Such Sweet Sorrow pt 1' onwards (Michael opened the wormhole forward without having to set the signals first, the final space battle happened differently, etc.) to make room for certain characters being dragged, sometimes unwillingly, along for the ride. I have no idea if I'll ever write the fic in this series where Stamets translates his expertise in mushroom cultivation into a deep and abiding passion for Terralysium gardening, but after that last space battle that's definitely the vibe I want for these guys.
> 
> I have watched Star Trek for literal decades at this point but never written anything for it. This is terrifying. But this is the show that invented surfing across the galaxy on a highway of magic mushrooms, so I've guiltily made up anything I couldn't google an answer for. Sorry.

 

_vital signs of life_

* * *

 

 

Watching the blast-darkened wreck of the _Enterprise_ drift out of the wormhole _,_ Michael thinks about breathing.

The facts she’d learned as a child: breathing, one of the basic functions of the human autonomic nervous system. A process, reassuringly efficient; a link between her and her Vulcan classmates the teacher took care to point out, and it was only much later that she wondered if Amanda had dropped an anvil-subtle hint.

At the time, all she’d known was that the teacher was wrong. As she’d listened to (she thought) the murder of both her parents she learned that breathing was in fact a tether, fraying and any process forgotten in the panic but impossible to repress. All that kept her from being washed away by grief until the search team found her, catatonic behind the closet door with air hissing bitterly through her teeth.

_(The average human can live for approximately three minutes without oxygen.)_

Only since joining Starfleet has she come to accept that the truth lies somewhere between. Starfleet runs on regulations stating breathing is the function to be protected at the expense of all other systems, a process, reduced to life support and science, but an undefinable tether too. The marvel of life persisting against the odds as humans and oxygen-dependent lifeforms walked through the airless void of space on the wings of starships and breathed, spoke, laughed, lived.

All of them know that even marvels fail. Her dreams hold shadows of the Section 31 crew frozen in the dark, echo with the pain of her own wheezing on Essof IV — knowing she’d made her choice, that she’d breathed safely on a hostile world and chosen on her own word to give that up. She remembers the dissonance of her body panicking even as her mind ran the logic of her safety under the watchful eyes of the crew, lungs seizing as the toxic particles tore into them, as the _basic function_ of breathing killed her. As her last breath rattled out, she’d had time to wonder if she’d ever take air for granted again.

_Easy as breathing_ humans say sometimes, and Michael has to fight to maintain a polite expression with all her Vulcan upbringing. It’s a nonsense cliche for those who’ve never walked the stars; no one in Starfleet who’s seen explosive decompression of a starship or witnessed an EVA gone wrong, lived through a life support malfunction, ever thinks of breathing as easy ever again. Sometimes, simply continuing to breathe in itself could become a final defiant act.

_(Travelling nine centuries through a wormhole apparently takes eighty-four seconds. That leaves ninety seconds and change. One, two…)_

Breathing, Michael was taught once and has come to understand, bone-deep and haunted, is a basic function — until it’s not. It’s a tether but one that can snap, or be cut, or be handed away.

_(...ten, eleven...)_

Drifting in unknown space and staring at the torpedo lodged in torn hull plating like jagged teeth near (too near) the bridge of the _Enterprise_ , half the ship opened up to the vacuum – Michael, now, runs through everything she knows about breathing, how fast she suffocated on Essof IV. How much it hurt. She calculates the merciless math of how long it might take to suffocate in a ship torn open to space and it takes every fragment of willpower she has to force herself not to be that little girl catatonic in a closet again, sucking air through teeth clenched against her sobs.

_He got out. The crew all got out and he made it to an escape pod before we were pulled through the wormhole. That’s nothing more than a broken, empty ship._

_Twenty-one. Twenty-tw-_

‘Incoming!’ Detmer’s voice crackles over the comm built into the suit. The temporal anomaly is closing behind them as the wreck of the _Enterprise_ clears the red cloud that marks the rip in spacetime. _Discovery_ ’s already through safely to Michael’s right as she tries to juggle the suit’s boosters without spinning herself like a top (‘Equal and opposite reactions, Michael!’ says the memory of Tilly cheerfully in her head), to pay attention to the overload of readings flashing across the HUD as the suit winds down from the time jump, and simultaneously convince her body that she has oxygen, that the suit’s life support was put together by the best minds in Starfleet even if it was on a ludicrous multitasking wave of panic, she’s _fine_ -

But Detmer sounds anything but fine and there’s a silver blur tumbling through the maw of the wormhole on the _Enterprise_ ’s tail. Much smaller as it would have to be to fit the contracting anomaly, not a starship but a shuttle and for a moment her heartbeat thuds too hard over a flare of hope.

‘Shuttle identified as Section 31.’ Owo’s voice cuts short Michael’s urge to do something truly stupid like fly toward the shuttle – the _enemy_ shuttle, did she abandon her common sense nine centuries ago? – ‘No response to hail.’

‘If that’s harbouring Control, we have to destroy it before it can escape or everything we’ve done will be for nothing.’

Even after everything she’s survived in the last few weeks (months, years, _her entire life_ ) Michael’s strangely proud to hear her voice come out so calm. Solid Vulcan repression might leave her wanting to kick Spock in the kneecaps occasionally just to elicit a reaction but it’s a bedrock now, holding her steady even as she’s howling inside the private confines of her mind every time she glances at the wreck.

There is savage satisfaction in adding, ‘Recommend a photon torpedo.’ Revenge for her grief might be petty, but not even a Vulcan would read the bitterness beneath her tone and the false memory of Leland’s hand around her throat lingers. Even Sarek might allow that she’s owed a little petty.

‘If we miss and hit the _Enterprise_ -’ Saru doesn’t need to finish, not when they’re short on time and he knows they understand his quiet warning just the same. The shuttle is righting itself now and almost past the drag of the wormhole, a bright spark against the _Enterprise_ ’s blast-darkened hull. If it clears it, it’ll go to warp and _Discovery_ would have to choose between retrieving Michael and giving chase.

She’d tell them to go in a heartbeat. But she has the suit, and she won’t risk them losing each other in unfamiliar space, so far from home.

‘Do it,’ Michael says and barely hears the confirmation from Owo, closes her eyes against the flare of the torpedo launch. She has no capacity for anything in that moment beyond drawing in a breath, two, that tastes slightly metallic from the suit’s life support filters and her own fear. Waits for the concussive shock of a ship bigger than the shuttle breaking apart, for her last hope to go up in a pyre in the vast expanse of unknown future space.

‘Shuttle destroyed,’ Owo says over the comm and Michael exhales a double-lungful of relief.

‘Are-’ Finally her calm cracks; furious with herself, she swallows the hitch. ‘Are there any life signs aboard the _Enterprise_?’

‘We’re having some trouble with the sensors until the temporal distortion fades.’ Tilly’s voice at least holds all the heartbreak Michael’s ruthlessly compressing into practicality. ‘We had confirmation from Ca- Captain Pike-’ Her voice wobbles as she steadies herself. ‘- that the crew was over ninety-nine percent evacuated before we entered the wormhole and they were drawn in after us. He should have had time to make it to an escape pod.’

_Should_ have, and Michael closes her eyes against the bleakness of uncertainty, all her bitterness drained away to leave only emptiness in the wake. Her entire life is a succession of breaking and rebuilding herself from the ground up, over and over and ripping off pieces of her soul every step along the way. She’s so fucking _tired_ of the universe asking her to have faith.

_Maybe that’s why you almost didn’t._

It’d been a close call. Earlier — twenty minutes left behind nine centuries ago — after she got into the suit and watched a white-faced Reno seat the time crystal with hands that shook despite her breezy _try not to run over anyone’s grandmother Burnham_ , a succession of failed calculations meant the wormhole finally opened too close to the battlefield. By accident alone it took out five Section 31 ships, blaze of fireworks lighting up one after another as the ripples spread, luckier than they deserved; it’d been a last-ditch effort coordinating between Michael and Spock in Engineering on _Discovery_ , Po shouting scanner readings from a nearby shuttle, to make the final calculations to get it to open at all. Nothing had gone to plan — not that, Michael realised as she’d fought the suit’s calculations, anything they did deserved being designated a _plan._ Intelligent panic and dumb luck might be the unofficial Starfleet playbook but the last few days had felt like bad decision cascading on bad decision until they were backed into a corner between disaster and- well, _the end of all sentient life in the galaxy_.

As weeks go, she’s had better. And the moment the Section 31 ships had surrounded them, outnumbered and cornered, in the space between one breath to another, Michael found she couldn’t bring herself to believe they would win.

She’d thought walking out to that chair on Essof IV was the most terrifying thing she’d ever do but it was a vacation stroll compared to stepping out of _Discovery_ ’s launch bay, knowing her insistence on piloting the suit to the future had killed them all. O nly a last minute Hail Mary they couldn’t have anticipated – the Sphere data saving _Discovery_ and her crew as an unintended side effect, upgrading the shields beyond all known Starfleet capability without their intervention until Section 31 torpedos went dark, inert before they could get close – saved her from crippling guilt, and saved everyone else from her.

As soon as they’d realised what was happening to _Discovery’_ s shields, Michael heard Saru give the order to cover the _Enterprise_ with their impenetrable blanket of safety and the Klingon flagship arriving in a blaze of glory and war chants over the comms tipped the balance of the fight but for all the luck and time travel in the universe, it’d been too little, too late. The _Enterprise_ ’s abandon ship was sounded, the hull rent apart by the barrage of torpedos and Michael had cried, silent, inside her helmet even she plotted the final coordinates for the jump.

In the midst of chaos, her desperate hands skimming through the math that would drag her out of reach, her own sadness caught her off-guard; she hadn’t even heard his final command, not tapped into the ship-to-ship comms and somehow it felt like fresh grief, that she’d never know if his voice wavered when he announced the end of his ship. The secondhand updates on the progress of the evacuation from _Discovery_ broke into static as she leaped forwards into the wormhole, not daring to glance back in case she got lost between the cracks in the universe.

_If he’d stayed on_ Discovery _, he’d be safe_ whispers the voice at the back of Michael’s mind, the one that these days sounds uncomfortably like the Terran Philippa.

She squashes it; it’s a baseless what-if. He was only ever on loan, never hers – theirs – to keep. She should be grateful that he’d been there at all. Lorca would have handed them over to Control in return for safe passage and fled to his own universe still full of sentient murderous life without a second thought.

When Starfleet assigned them their temporary captain, she’d wondered over the last few months — had they been demonstrating rare insight to understand he was what they all needed? Known that they were lending their best and brightest to be her own personal stepping stone back to solid footing after Lorca and Ash, after- _everything_? Even if Starfleet’s intent had been simple expediency faced with the Red Angel signals it didn't change that he’d rebuilt their fractured resilience, drawn them together after they’d been lost.

But it was a gift lent, not given. They wouldn’t have made it here without him and she’s been telling herself for weeks that it’s enough.

The possibility of a different choice still haunts her. She needs to spend less time listening to former Terran Emperors; it’s making her illogically selfish.

_Sixty-two. Sixty-three._

The comm’s been quiet for too long, she realises. It’s been forty breaths since Tilly spoke, forty inhales and exhales of clean, recycled oxygen wrapped around her by the seamless shell of her suit as she drifts in space, safe. A sniff over the open channel is most likely Tilly, holding back misery as she works on the sensors, the silence speaking of the conclusions they’re all coming to.

Adrift in the abrupt calm after a battle that Michael’s suit informs her ended over nine hundred years ago – something off about the numbers but she’s too distracted to process exactly what – they’re quiet because they’re coming to terms with a more final goodbye than the one they’d said an hour ago.

It’s been the longest of days in every possible sense and Michael has said final goodbyes to almost everyone she’s ever loved. Some of them more than once.

To hell with the entire universe if it’s forcing her to say it this time. She's done with having faith _._

‘Commander Burnham, what are you doing?’ Saru sounds sharp in the new, pushy way he’s grown into since his vahar’ai but she’s the one with the fancy flying suit and they can’t stop her. At least – she’s pretty sure transporters will still be offline or this is going to be an embarrassingly short rescue attempt. ‘We’re still reading no life signs and if that torpedo happens to blow, it will take out anything at close range.’

‘I know that, Saru.’ Michael maintains her new course, avoiding the drifting shuttle wreckage and watching unfamiliar constellations blurring into streaks as the bulk of the ruined _Enterprise_ looms before her. Flying the suit is nothing like flying an ordinary EVA with boosters, not when the suit controls are so responsive it almost feels like an extension of her own being, as if she’d grown an exoskeleton and branched wings from her own bones.

The comparison to how it might feel to be invaded by Control’s nanobots is...unnerving, but she’s learning to fly true and on course, and she’ll take the discomfort if it means she can reach the _Enterprise_ in time.

‘He’ll have made it out, Michael.’ (Of course it’s Tilly who’s worked it out, Tilly who’d probably be forming a cheering squad if she wasn’t on duty. Saying goodbye isn’t something any of them can do here, either, it would seem.) ‘He had at least five minutes to make it. Well, close to five. Minimum four. That’s plenty; I’ve seen him jogging on deck three before beta shift and he’s no slouch.’

‘He’d want me to be sure.’

‘He’d want you to be safe. Don’t do anything rash, Michael.’

That’s Spock over the comm, finally making it back to the bridge from Engineering, unharmed by the battle and that particular worry unclenches in Michael’s chest. He’ll be wearing that eyebrow tilt Michael taught herself to copy in the mirror as a child, his concern boxed neatly away unless you knew him well – but she knew him once, and the past few weeks have been a brutal learning curve for them both. He came with her here to this unknown space and time, left himself as orphaned as Michael had been on nothing more than a wish not to abandon her to leap into the void alone.

He’s telling her now, in his Spock way, not to leave him to the same fate. _This is a fool’s errand_ his tone says, even as he adds, ‘He will be exceedingly aggravating if I am to report back one day that we lost you because you believed him incapable of surviving without your assistance.’

‘He is the most capable person that I know,’ Michael replies. The gaping wound in the _Enterprise_ is right there in front of her now, half-shadowed from the ship’s flickering emergency lights, the torpedo lodged incongruously out like an old-time sailing mast. ‘But I also know it’s not in him to leave anyone behind, which is why I know he would not have left until one hundred percent of the crew was safe regardless of the danger to himself.’

The comm falls silent but Michael knows it’s acknowledgment, not rebuke. All of them want – no, need, to be sure and the arguments weren’t dissent, only filling the silence with white noise while they ran the possibilities to arrive at a solution. Familiar now, their worn-in ritual of how they work together; what they’d lived through was worth a hundred lifetimes as a crew before they ever travelled nine centuries together. Perhaps Pike became their touchstone but they went through the fire before, hand in hand, and came out tempered like fine steel.

Pride, and not a small amount of amazement, shivers warm down Michael’s spine. They’re so good together,the best of Starfleet and they _came with her_. In a less kind universe, she could be doing this alone. If she’s looking for faith in anything, she knows with certainty down to her depths: she has faith in _them._

_None of us would leave a Starfleet brother or sister behind… sir._

Drifting to a halt beside the jagged wound in the _Enterprise_ , her suit registers the faintest wisps of alteration in atmospheric readings; there’s barely any air escaping. Not because the hull is more secure than it looks, she knows, but because there’s no air left to escape. Panic starting to hammer like a trapped bird in her chest — _eighty-eight, eighty-nine —_ she grabs for the nearest spar of metal in her way.

‘We- we’re getting a life sign. Michael there’s- no it’s gone, _damn it_. I’ll keep trying.’ There’s a thump over the comm that’s probably Tilly hitting the console in frustration, judging by the wet, desperate edge to her audible breathing.

Michael can hardly blame her; her own cheeks are still wet inside her helmet, nine centuries of grief still fresh. None of them have had any time to process the abrupt shift from chaotic battle to empty space, their own isolation from every backup and everything familiar. Anyone they save here, they’ll be doing it without Starfleet and that’s _fine,_ she reminds herself, they’re _good_ at winging the kind of dramatic rescues which had Starfleet counselors sending increasingly-frantic daily reminders about getting enough sleep and downtime ( each one universally ignored because honestly, _saving all sentient life in the galaxy_ rates higher up the priority list than getting a solid eight hours).

Their biggest flaw as a crew at this point is probably that none of them deal well with inaction. Saving their captain right after arriving in the future could be the rallying cry they need.

_Ninety...six. Ninety-seven._

Or he could be dead already and their welcome to the future will be a funeral. Michael wonders, with scientific detachment, how many times she can have her heart ripped out before it gives up entirely.

‘Tilly, any luck with the signal? ’ she asks to distract herself. She wrenches harder than necessary at the metal and stifles a yelp when a muscle in her back protests, drifts back slightly to weigh what she needs to do to create a Michael-sized gap with healthy wariness for the torpedo wedged precariously to her left. ‘Can you beam him out?’

‘There’s too much interference still, either from the wormhole or maybe the shifted hull plating – I can’t get a lock. If you can reach him, I can use the suit’s readouts as a beacon, it’s strong – but you’ll need to be right next to him.’

‘Noted.’ The suit’s gyros whine a protest as Michael tries, unsuccessfully, to shift another piece of hull plate. ‘Is he still on the bridge?’

‘It is hard to tell precisely with the damage but from your current position he is one deck above and to your left.’ That’s Saru’s voice and Michael spares a flicker of concern for Tilly before Spock clearly reads her silence with his damned insight, adds:

‘Ensign Tilly is on her way to the transporter room to see if she can refine the signal. You must hurry, Michael.’

Instead of starting a needless fight with _do you want me to be safe or do you want me to hurry_ , Michael pauses to give the torpedo an assessing glance. The lights are dark, the display blank – it passed through _Discovery_ ’s Sphere-enhanced defensive shields which, she assumes, is why it hadn’t detonated on impact but rather slammed through the hull like a deadweight projectile.

It might reactivate, it might not. Regardless, she doesn’t have time to run a diagnostic and if it does detonate it’s unlikely she’ll have the time to regret her haste. Taking a firm grip on the torn hull plating, Michael braces herself and ignites her boosters.

The reinforced gloves of the suit bite half an inch deep into the metal and her shoulders threaten to dislocate but with a shudder she feels in her palms, the plate bends back on itself. Disengaging the power before she goes faceplate-first into the side of the ship and need rescuing herself – Spock’s _I told you so_ face would be insufferable for the _next_ nine centuries – Michael flips and wriggles into the gap she’s created, occasionally using the smooth side of the torpedo for balance as she slides into the dark.

Briefly she’s worried that she’ll rip the wings from the suit but almost before the thought has time to cross her mind, a proximity warning flashes up on the HUD and the curves of metal retract, folding into neat sweeps along her back like a bird going to ground.

It would be so easy to get addicted to programming this intuitive and she wonders, suddenly, how her mother coped – will cope? Damn time travel – with the loss of it.

Maybe when all this over she’ll get the chance to ask. She refuses to let her thoughts linger on the readout from when she’d first tumbled out the wormhole, the numbers that meant she won’t be getting an answer any time soon.

‘Life sign still intermittent.’ Spock’s voice, quiet and steady in her ear. They have a direct feed of the suit’s readouts; they must be watching her heart rate climb. ‘Twenty metres to your left and take the lift shaft up.’

‘Acknowledged.’ Michael frees her hand from a tangle of severed wiring and drags herself the last few inches through the torn hull. It’s pitch black without even the leftover running lights and starlight outside, internal gravity failed and she floats disoriented in the darkness, thudding gently against the side of the corridor before the suit’s exterior lights flick automatically on, a lifeline in the dark.

_I love this suit_.

The lights pan over buckled walls and empty corridor, broken access panels hanging down like a bizarre art installation but no bodies, no watching eyes in the shadows. She’s almost shaking with leftover adrenaline and the creeping, unfounded (most _likely_ unfounded but don’t calculate probabilities, just _don’t_ ) fear that she’ll turn to find Leland or unknown puppets of Control watching her from the dark. No one from _Discovery_ would get to her in time to help. Best case scenario, she’d have time to shout for them to destroy the ship – including her – before Control escaped.

The only sound is the whir of the suit and her own breathing. _Enterprise_ is entirely dead.

‘In another moment down went Alice after it,’ she murmurs as she orients herself, pushes left and making a point _not_ to glance at anything that might be behind her. The words are half-rote as her skin prickles cold with terror, her own comfort pattern. ‘Never once considering how in the world she was to get out again.’

‘Can you repeat that?’ Detmer asks, confused, but Spock’s voice cuts over her.

‘Well, thought Alice to herself, after such a fall as this I shall think nothing of tumbling down-stairs. How brave they’ll all think me at home.’

In spite of the situation, Michael smiles. ‘I suspect even Alice might have thought something of it if she fell for as long as we have.’

‘While she lacked the requisite technological experience to predict falling almost a thousand years into the future, I believe she would have viewed the situation with the same logical application of action as you, Michael.’ Spock sounds supremely unconcerned by all the baffled stares he must be getting from the rest of the bridge crew by now, but her heart rate is slowing until she feels slightly less on the brink of a meltdown. ‘Lift shaft is ten metres in front of you. Please watch out for any disembodied cats.’

(‘Have they gone future space crazy?’ Detmer whispers.

‘If they have, I call dibs on tackling tall and pointy,’ Owo whispers back. ‘Michael’s more terrifying when she’s mad.’

‘I would be happy to provide practical evidence to support my own menace,’ Spock says dryly and stifled giggling over the comm makes Michael smile in spite of herself, the panic tamped down.)

The turbolift doors are ajar, bent askew by the buckle of the ship. It’s much easier to wrench them open than the external hull plating and Michael squeezes through as soon as the gap is wide enough, boosting herself upward probably too fast but no one’s mentioned the life sign for over a minute now and she’s trying not to imagine being a minute too late. When the doors marked _Bridge_ flash up in the brightness from her helmet light she overcompensates on her flip this time and hits them hard enough to make her grunt as they dent outward.

‘Michael?’

‘I’m fine Spock, just oversteered. I’m on the bridge. Directions?’

‘Three metres to your left.’

Unexpected and out of breath, Tilly laughs over the comm. ‘Did you honestly just crash your one-of-a-kind time-suit _?_ I guess you’re still in training wheels – ooo, when we have time we should set up some suit-driving practice for you, I can build you an obstacle course! Do you think racing stripes would improve or hinder the speed of time travel? Maybe if I synthesise a paint of LHC particles... and if there’s a way we could combine that with the spores to enhance your navigation in harmony with the network, you’d _glow,_ do you want to glow Michael, just FYI the correct answer is yes.’

Michael’s riding the end of a nine-hundred-year-long stress high, forcing her way through the wreckage of Starfleet’s pride and joy flagship; the fact that she laughs at all, she decides, makes up for the fact that it trips out faintly hysterical.

‘Tilly, if you get the transporters working then you can paint me in all the glowing rainbow stripes you want.’

‘I’m holding you to that.’

She magnetises the suit’s boots to the deck for ease and seeks left, pushing aside a support beam with a groan of stressed metal. Everything is dark and cold and airless, the bright orange accents that reminded her of the graceful pillars of their house on Vulcan when she first stepped onto this bridge all charred to grey now and her panic starts to trip up again.

_No one could survive this_ whispers that Philippa voice and this time Michael can’t quite silence it. There’s nothing here – nothing but a twisted mess of shattered consoles and bent hull in the tiny beams from the suit lights, everything silent.

‘You should be standing right in front of him, Michael.’

‘There’s nothing _here_.’ Michael’s voice pitches uncomfortably high. It’s been fifteen minutes since the air ran out; there’s nothing to suggest anyone has somehow survived on the bridge. If the sensors are wrong after all - ‘Are you _sure_ I’m in the right place?’

‘Sure as sure.’ Tilly sounds firm in the way that means she’s forcing herself calm with data. ‘You should be able to reach out and touch him.’

All that’s in front of her is the side of the bridge, the smooth curve of alloy scratched by shattered screens. What used to be the ceiling is now a jagged latticework of support beams and wiring hanging around her, cold and still. The suit lights shine through it, unobstructed by anything larger than her handwidth; there’s nowhere he could be out of sight and still alive. Unless he’s somehow inside the wall-

Wait, the wall is curved – but _outwards_ , interrupting the usual concave bridge circle with what could be a structural support or a quirk of the design, or-

‘Spock, does the _Enterprise_ have a captain’s escape pod?’

‘No. The design meant that not all bridge crew pods could be accommodated and Captain Pike reassigned his pod to make up the shortfall. He insisted that he would make it to the nearest emergency bank, same as the rest of the crew.’ Spock’s pause is thoughtful, even over the comm. ‘Number One was... distressingly loud regarding her opinion of his self-preservation instincts at the time, so it is not implausible that she could have had one installed during the refit.’

Michael stares at the wall and yes, the curve is the right dimensions for a pod tube. When she pushes aside the hanging tangle of wiring that used to be the Engineering station, she finds the printed letters _Cpt Emergency Pod._

If she ever makes it back to a time when Number One is still around, Michael is sending her on an all-expenses paid vacation to anywhere in the galaxy that she wants to go.

‘Spock, there is a pod but the outer hatch is closed.’ Michael misses any reply because she’s pushing aside more wiring, searching for the display panel and finding a red warning light, the only light left on the bridge other than from her suit. It’s blinking next to _Deploy Failure._

‘The life sign is someone in the captain’s pod,’ she says, and catches herself before she can hope, ruthlessly forcing herself to be realistic. The sensors might be malfunctioning and the pod will be empty. Worst case scenario, it could be _Leland._

Or- the captain would give his pod up in an instant to someone else if he thought it was necessary, and in the destruction of the ship he might not have noticed it failing to deploy before he escaped another way. He might be twenty minutes and almost a thousand years ago, taking a head count of the _Enterprise_ crew and starting to worry when the bridge numbers came up short. It would be illogical to get ahead of herself.

She finds herself hoping illogically anyway.

‘It looks like it’s failed to launch with the others,’ she says. ‘I can’t see through the outer hatch.’

‘Can you open it? The system’s completely dead so I can’t hack it from here but the manual release should be to your right.’

Michael runs her gloved hands down the hatch, tracing the hairline crack where the hatch should open and trying to feel with her fingertips through the alloy of her suit. Where the manual release depression should be there’s only a dent, buckled against debris.

‘Tilly, I can’t reach the release handle. Could I hotwire it?’

‘No, escape pods are on isolated systems which sounded like a sensible safety precaution when I first learned it but now seems kind of dumb when the _entire ship_ has no power and you can’t get inside the hatch to the secondary manual release inside the pod. Who puts a manual release inside anything anyway, honestly, if we ever get back I’m going to write a sternly worded evisceration to R&D.’ Tilly’s on a roll now, latching onto the problem in a way Michael knows is a distraction from what they’re all thinking; _who’_ _s inside._ ‘You might be able to prise it open if there’s a gap, or if someone can get into a suit I can beam them to your location with a laser cutter.’

Michael tries and fails to get her fingertips into the hairline crack. ‘That would take too long – give me a second.’

Closing her glove into a fist, she draws it back and makes a few adjustments to strengthen the suit’s elbow joint for an impact, warnings flickering past on the display for her to ignore. She can’t risk using the boosters to hit too hard in case she drives pieces of the hatch into the pod itself but she only needs to get a hand inside for contact and Tilly can beam them – whoever’s inside – out.

_Please don’t let me kill whoever is in there_ she silently asks because the damn universe owes her a favour and drives her fist into the hatch.

She breaks at least one finger on impact. Her suit’s readings blank red from the adrenaline spike and an involuntary cry escapes her gritted teeth, Spock’s measured alarm sharp over the comm but if she hesitates to listen then she risks being debilitated from the pain. Before she has time to register consciously how much it hurts, she hits the hatch again.

‘ _Michael_.’ From the panicked volume, it’s not the first time Tilly’s said her name. ‘I thought Spock was making some incomprehensible Vulcan family in-joke about the cats but is something attacking you?! What-’

‘I’m fine, Tilly,’ Michael reassures, blinking dancing lights from her vision. _There’ll be time to inconveniently p_ _ass out later; rescue_ _first_ _._ ‘ Prying open the hatch now.’

Where she hit, the metal is bent inward enough around the join to leave a gap two fingers wide, just enough. With her non-pulverised hand, Michael gets a grip and _yanks_.

Protocols designed to assist search and research teams engage and the hatch locks release. Light spills out from the clear pod cover as the outer hatch slides back, light from a still-powered escape pod, one occupant. Michael’s thrown by an expanse of bare skin for a moment when she’s looking for a uniform, has to blink again to focus and catch her breath.

Captain Pike looks back at her from inside the pod and she didn’t know her heart could backflip in her chest but that’s how it feels, all her insides gone more weightless than can be accounted for by the lack of gravity. He’s _here_ and he’s-

He’s suffocating.

She catalogues with the rapid detachment of necessity. Too pale, eyes half-lidded, hazy, his mouth wide as he gasps for oxygen that isn’t there. He’s also shirtless, bare chest so incongruous that Michael flounders for a moment – is this a trick of Control’s and not the captain at all? – before she sees the crack running the length of the pod’s clear shell, gaping to a jagged, fist-sized hole stuffed with a bundle of gold fabric. Pike has one hand pressed to hold it in place but it’s hardly airtight and her suit’s external sensors are delivering specs and damage reports almost as fast as her own assessment.

During the failed launch, the pod shell cracked and trapped him in a pocket of fast-depleting air. He’d been slowly suffocating without any reasonable hope of rescue and he’d still plugged the hole, tried desperately to stay alive as long as he could.

Breathing as a final defiant act. _Of course_.

‘Captain?’ she tries before his eyes slide past her and she realises he can’t hear her, can’t see through the mirrored faceplate of her helmet. She can see him all too well, the grey tinge to his lips and short, rapid heave of his chest as he struggles to breathe.

Hypoxia, the suit’s wrist readout suggests – unhelpfully because she _knows,_ mentally running over potential outcomes for ten minutes already. The pod kept him alive as the rest of the _Enterprise_ ’s systems died but now it’s in her way.

‘Tilly can you get a lock yet?’

‘No, he’s not wearing a comm’ - probably because he’s not wearing a shirt to attach it to but she’s really not up to announcing that to the entire bridge - ‘and the signal’s still flickering, we might only end up with bits of him which, ew. If you can touch him, the sensors in the suit gloves will get us a life sign reading and I can use that to enhance the pattern. Is it-’ Tilly rushes the last without pausing for breath and stumbles. ‘Never mind, we have to save them anyway, it shouldn’t matter.’

‘It’s Captain Pike,’ Michael confirms and tunes out Tilly having emotions at her over the comm as a concern for later as she assesses the problem.

Escape pods were made of the strongest single-layered fabrics known to Starfleet, in the expectation that they might be launched into debris or combat situations; it’s unlucky for the transparent aluminum of this one to have cracked. It also means Michael isn’t going to be punching her way through it no matter how many fingers she sacrifices.

It’s fortunate then that she doesn’t need to. With her good hand Michael raps gently on the pod to catch the captain’s attention, waits for the flash of blue her way and points at the hole he’s holding shut. Aware he can’t see her exaggerated mouthing of the words through the suit faceplate, instead she points to him, then herself, and closes her hand in his eyeline to mime touch.

Those blue eyes blink, unfocused and slide shut, _dammit_. Michael knocks on the pod shell again, harder.

‘Captain, I need to touch you,’ she says out loud and Tilly makes a startled choking sound over the comm. ‘Tilly, are you okay? Was that you getting a lock?’

‘No- no, that was just many, many weeks of stifling the urge to comment on certain people having intense eye-contact make-out sessions across the bridge and in the turbolift and over lunch every single day all coming back at once to smack me upside the head with my own restraint, nevermind I just – oh my god I think I’m high on panic please never tell him I said any of this after you save his life, please save his life so I can be embarrassed about this instead of emotionally destroyed, I’m going to- shut up now and let you do your Michael-the-hero thing. Sorry.’

Michael’s pretty sure the half-stifled snort she hears over the comm is laughter, and she’s also pretty sure it’s Detmer but only because Spock doesn’t laugh.

At least none of them can see her blushing.

‘Tilly,’ she says evenly as she waves to catch Pike’s attention, pointing more insistently at the bunched shirt to no effect. ‘When this is over, I’m going to recommend a new module for the Command Training Programme covering the penalties for starting unfounded rumours about superior officers. Up to and including my rights as the injured party to hide Lycosian tarantulas in your bed.’

‘Eh, I haven’t handed in my assignments for almost a thousand years so I’m pretty sure I’ve flunked out anyway and I’ll just skip that one. Also aren’t you like, scared of spiders?’

Michael gives up trying to attract the captain’s attention and starts pushing at the bunched fabric blocking the hole instead, trying to force his hand to move away. ‘Fear of non-poisonous arachnids that are much smaller and more fragile than I am would be illogical.’

‘That’s not a no.’

‘That is because she is indeed scared of spiders.’ Spock’s tone has the lilt that means he’s exasperated; he’s not had enough exposure to Tilly to appreciate how often her stream-of-consciousness talk can lead to a solution or, Michael’s observed, calm everyone down enough to make reasonable decisions. It’s going to make one hell of a captain’s style.

If they ever make it back to a time that needs Starfleet captains that is.

‘Thanks Spock,’ she says, letting her tone run dry. ‘Expose all my weaknesses.’

‘I must make the most of the few you have or you will never let me win an argument.’ It’s about as close as Spock ever gets to to a compliment and something warm blooms beneath Michael’s ribs, slowing her racing heart rate as surely as Tilly’s teasing. ‘Have you managed to break into the pod yet?’

‘He’s fighting me.’ Aware that all their nonsense talk is centred on keeping her calm while she saves the captain’s life, Michael presses harder against the shirt. Pike presses back to hold it in place, rolling his head side to side in what could be a silent _no_. He’s breathing shallower now, chest hitching and Michael mutters the Vulcan insults she saves for her worst moments under her breath, slams her palm flat to the pod in frustration. ‘Do you think he knows it’s me? Maybe he thinks I’m Control.’

‘It is possible he cannot recognise the suit, but he must realise you are attempting to provide assistance.’ Spock hesitates. ‘What else is he doing?’

‘Suffocating,’ Michael whispers. She lets her faceplate rest against the pod, pressing herself to the clear shell with her good hand flattened beside her to show that she’s unarmed. Pike’s eyes rove dizzily and then catch, something sharp there and gone in the depths as he stares at her directly for the first time. ‘It’s me,’ Michael whispers, knowing he can’t hear her; she’s never wished so hard to be from a telepathic species. ‘Captain, please.’

He blinks at her, leaning body-length and defenceless up against the pod. Sharpness flickers in blue again, something of her – their – captain surfacing through the haze and he swallows, mouth moving soundlessly around his gasps for air, but the shape of it is clear.

‘ _Michael_?’

Michael nods too enthusiastically and winces when her helmet bounces off the pod. ‘ _Yes_ ,’ she answers, futile, and offers him a thumbs up instead. Can’t resist flicking her hand out after, fingers spread in an irritated gesture to imply _obviously_ and even running out of air, lips blue, the corners of Pike’s mouth twitch up.

But when Michael reaches back toward the jagged hole in the pod, he shakes his head.

‘ _What_?!’ Michael’s own rage, born of stress and exhaustion and the grinding agony of her broken hand, _snaps_. She hears Spock say ‘Michael?’ softly over the comm and doesn’t allow herself to care, slams her good palm hard against the pod again instead and watches Pike flinch at the impact. ‘I’m trying to help, why won’t you _let_ me?'

He mouths something again. Michael swears to the higher power he believes in, if he’s saying goodbye then she’s going to claw her way through the aluminium regardless and drag him back to _Discovery_ by her teeth if they’re the only things left unbroken when she’s done and she will _never let him hear the end of it_.

Barely aware of the fresh tears leaving wet tracks inside her helmet, she holds still to watch him – focusing on the smart, subtle mouth she’s spent months telling herself should be no more an object of fascination than anyone else’s, telling herself she only has reverence for the words he says because of the kind of captain he embodies, the best of Starfleet. Pretending the warmth that flares inside her when he smiles is nothing more than pride in her captain’s approval.

She gets so distracted by the curve of his mouth now, she misses what he says the first time. It’s… an S and… his lips meeting, a B? Sickbay?

Michael hits the pod again. ‘I’m _trying_ _to_ _get_ _you to Sickbay_ you muffle-headed son of a Tribble!’

Over the comm there’s a stunned pause before Tilly whispers:

‘Okay, do we try to intervene now or do we let her get some of that anger out by shouting first? Because I have to say I think I’m all tapped out on suicide missions for today.’

Michael wants to apologise, reassure them that she’s fine but Tilly’s told her countless times that she’s a terrible liar, and also she’s afraid that if she takes her attention from the captain he’ll pass out before she can understand his message. He’s waving his free hand weakly, apparently trying to indicate – her? The lower decks? She makes a helpless gesture in response but his eyes are flickering shut, the last spark of life fading as his hands-

As his hands drop to his sides, shirt falling away from the hole in the pod with a hiss as the last air escapes. Michael hears her own breath choke on a sob as she jams her fist through, ignoring the jagged aluminum scratching on the suit alloy as finally, she presses her gloved hand to Pike’s chest.

‘Oh my god I’ve- I’ve got a lock, Michael don’t move!’

‘Hurry,’ Michael says numbly. Resting her gaze on the captain’s still face, she searches in vain for the elusive, gleaming spark that she catches herself thinking of sometimes, in quiet moments going over briefings, or when he’s tired at the end of a shift with his shoulders slumped slightly, still making the effort to listen to every word her reports, as _Chris_.

There’s nothing, his chest still beneath her gloved palm. She can’t even feel his heart beating through the thick alloy of the suit. Panic bunches in her throat like a scream working to come out, voiceless denial; they can’t be too late, she _refuses._

‘Tilly _-’_

Even as Tilly’s tumble of reassurance crackles over the comm, Michael feels the stir of the transporter. She’s lost count of how many times they’ve done this now, relied on the other to save them as the universe threatened to come apart; for every time she’s caught him in an asteroid field, he’s come back for her in a rain of falling debris and Red Angel light. She just has time to wonder if they’d have achieved the same mutual trust if he’d been her captain without the constant terror of imminent death – _it would’ve been nice to have less of that_ – and then she’s rematerialising to Tilly’s pale, determined face over at the transporter console, _Discovery_ ’s familiar lines coming into focus around her.

_Home_ , she thinks, just time to acknowledge her own wash of relief before her body’s moving for her, lunging on instinct to catch Pike as he crumples without the pod to hold him up.

Forgetting, Michael reaches with both hands and can’t bite back a scream when his weight hits her broken fingers. She drops to her knees with him still, heavy against her chest; without the suit’s reinforced joints they’d both be flat on the deck and she locks her shoulders, dizzy from the jolt of pain every time the bones in her hand grind together wrong. Detecting a breathable atmosphere the suit’s helmet retracts at least and suddenly she’s gone from Pike trapped at untouchable arms-length to indecorously close, her face buried in hair that smells of ozone and smoke and faintly beneath it all, the standard issue Starfleet shampoo.

That last makes her wonder, wild with panic, when in the last few days of fear and desperation and terrible goodbyes he found time for a shower. If he’d taken deep breaths in his like she had in hers, the last time before Control caught up with them, leaning into the slick side of the stall and trying to stop feeling like she was falling against her will, hands grasping uselessly on nothing.

They’re full now – although she would never have pictured this even if she’d dared to believe they’d survive Control. He’s slumped, unconscious (at least she hopes it’s only unconscious) and the weight and the brush of his hair is a flashback back to Terralysium, body memory a confusion that has her shifting to accommodate a phaser blast to the chest that isn’t there.

(The phantom pain of being so sure she’d failed, again, still is. He’d just survived a five year mission and then almost died twice in the first few days of knowing her; she’d tried hard not to think the word _cursed_ because it’s superstitious impracticality, but if two is a coincidence then three is a _pattern_. It only takes so many Starfleet captains dying in unusual circumstances before everyone, including her, starts looking askance at the common denominator.

_Please don’t let me be cursed.)_

‘Michael.’ There’s hands tugging at her, jolting her back to the transporter pad. All her muscles tense automatically but it’s only Stamets, familiar blur of pale hair and soft pleading at the peripheral of her awareness. ‘You can untense from all that fight or flight now, we’ve got you. It’s okay.’

Michael tries to relax and discovers that she can’t remember how. It’s been hours since the battle against Control started and she’s feeling every one of those centuries travelled; her whole body feels knotted with the urge to keep fighting. If she lets go of the captain, she’ll have to face their new reality.

She’ll have to face what it means if _unconscious_ is actually something worse and she _can’t_.

And then Philippa is there, sporting a truly impressive black eye and split lip, but still a calm anchor in Michael’s line of sight. Her grip is firm on Michael’s shoulder, bracing without pulling, drawing her focus.

‘As much as I would like to take over command of _Discovery_ ,’ she says, ‘I fear there may be many tiresome objections raised and it has been a long day so, this once, I would prefer for you to let go so we may help him breathe. Michael. Let go.’

Michael’s refused orders given in that steady voice once and almost brought down Starfleet; the necessity of obeying now is ingrained to her core. Her arms loosen and other hands draw Pike away, his hair brushing soft across her cheek before he’s gone; all she’s left with are glimpses through the flurry of activity as they set him gently down on the deck; Dr Pollard with an oxygen mask, Stamets hovering and Rhys snapping at him to be less of a mother hen and _help_ , Saru’s voice over the comm requesting an update that she’s too dizzy to hear if anyone answers. The efficient motions of Michael’s found family all concentrated on the captain, lying motionless and silent on the deck.

She tries to take comfort in their competence, all focused on making sure he lives. Tries to remember that she has faith in them.

But he’s so still. His eyes are closed and the lips that she knows in smiles and pensive curls, tight around fair reprimands when she’s done something more reckless than usual, are colourless behind the oxygen mask. She can’t take her eyes off his mouth, the mouth that she’d watched form her own name through the pod and try to tell her-

‘Michael!’

Tilly’s hug is half-tackle, half-yelp as she bruises an elbow on the suit. Michael spares a flicker of amusement for the startled flinch back from Philippa as if the overspill of feelings might be contagious.

‘You did it you know,’ Tilly says into her shoulder, ‘we’re in the future! Almost exactly where we wanted to be although maybe we misplaced a digit somewhere in the math – oh!’ She pulls back, suddenly all gleaming eyes and professional curiosity as she snaps a tricorder from her belt. ‘Are you okay, did you have any problems in the wormhole? Any disorientation or dizziness, shortness of-’

The tricorder beeps and – breaking about six Starfleet care of equipment protocols – she shakes it as if that might correct the readout she’s staring at.

‘Michael,’ she breathes, wide-eyed. ‘Your _hand._ ’

Over her shoulder Michael hears Dr Pollard say quietly, dropped like a stone into a calm, clear lake, ‘If we can’t get him out of respiratory arrest now it won’t matter if he’s in Sickbay or not, so get out of my way Mr Stamets,’ and all the pieces Michael’s been puzzling over come together.

‘Tilly you need to beam me back to the _Enterprise_ right now.’

‘No!’ Tilly and Philippa snap in chorus and any other time, the mutually appalled look they exchange at being in agreement on anything would be funny. Surprisingly it’s Tilly who wins the battle of glares to say,

‘That’s nonsense talk Michael, you’ve fractured half the bones in your left hand and there’s no one there, okay? We’re not picking up any more life signs.’

Michael’s already leaning back, fumbling to reactivate her helmet. ‘You wouldn’t pick them up if they were in Sickbay.’

‘Of course we would, we couldn’t lock onto the captain in that damn pod but we could see you both clear as fireflies on the sensors, there’s no reason for Sickbay to be-’

Mid-sentence, Tilly pauses with her mouth open on an _oh_ of realisation, staring at Michael. ‘No reason...unless they activated that super fancy new emergency shielding to protect Sickbay in case of being boarded, we got a memo about it last month so they’ll have had it installed during the refit but I read it, I remember – it’s on a separate circuit like the pods so it might still be active oh my god, we won’t know if they even have _life support,_ we need-’

She’s already up, working the problem as she sprints back to the console and pushes Rhys out of the way. ‘ Sorry, not sorry – Michael, I can beam you right outside Sickbay doors but we’ll need a captain’s code to open them if they’re on the emergency routine, is Captain Pike-’

‘Working on it,’ Dr Pollard snaps, voice tight.

‘We don’t need a code,’ Philippa says. Her hand is tucked at the small of Michael’s back, holding her up out of sight of the others, as if needing support even now might be taken as a weakness. Circling the adrenaline crash and exhaustion, Michael can’t find it in herself to resent the subterfuge.

Still, _trust_ is a different question. ‘If you’re planning to use a Section 31 code to get in, that’s probably a bad idea. They might think we’re Control.’

Around the puffiness of the bruising, Philippa favours her with the look of uniquely Terran disappointment that says she expects better of Michael’s intelligence.

‘We don’t need a code when we have this.’ She lifts the laser cutter in her hand – a hand already gloved in an ordinary spacesuit Michael realises and startled, hears the clear echo of Tilly saying _If someone can get in a suit, I can beam them over with a laser cutter._

‘...You were coming to help me,’ she says, slow with amazement. The memory of the argument they’d had nine centuries ago is still a bitterness beneath it – but they won the fight and they made it here, and the bruising on Philippa’s face indicates that she almost hadn’t. If Michael’s last words to her had been those, offered in an anger born of fear...there’s been so many chances she’s missed up until now. She needs to be better at not throwing them away. ‘After everything you said about letting yourself be exploited by others? After everything I said to you.’

Philippa drops whiplash-fast into the expression of superiority that’s her default fallback whenever Michael catches her tripping accidentally into caring.

‘We had an unfinished conversation to revisit,’ she says, tone almost bored. ‘I could hardly allow you to throw your life away on tragic heroics erroneously believing that you had had the last word. I have standards to uphold.’

(‘Pulse stablilising,’ Dr Pollard murmurs. ‘We might be safe to move him to Sickbay.’)

Michael smiles. ‘Apology accepted.’

‘I have nothing to apologise _for_ -’

‘Tilly,’ Michael calls and struggles to her feet, ignoring Philippa’s irritated huff as she stands beside her. ‘Put us as close to Sickbay as you can and prep for incoming injured, we don’t know how many there could be. Energize.’

Occupied with Tilly's shouted order to _use the laser cutter this time not your damn hand, Michael_ and already thinking ahead, focused on the rescue mission, it's only at last second as _Discovery_ fades into the blur of the transporter that Michael gives in to the whispering insistence of her heart and looks down.

And briefly, half-lidded and beautifully looking back, she sees a flicker of blue.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Former Terran emperors make terrible counsellors.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey so, this second part was all (hand)written before I posted the first one - only everyone in the comments was invested in what was going on in Sickbay and it was a moment of wait, why am *I* not more invested in Sickbay?
> 
> I got more invested. And then I rewatched most of season two and got very annoyed at how everyone desperately needed a hug (except maybe Philippa) and major counselling (everyone, definitely including Philippa) and I got majorly over-invested, and this got longer, and longer, and everyone talks *way* too much and after a certain point it seemed to make sense to split it at a natural pause into two more chapters instead of one. (It's all done and the next chapter is going up right now; don't worry, I'm not going to make everyone wait while I extend the chapter count in perpetuity.
> 
> I mean, if I did that I'd never get to the fic in this series that has actual horses and Discovery singing songs to Tilly. At this point I might be writing this 'verse for the next nine centuries.)

* * *

Discounting the lack of life support, damage around Sickbay is less extensive than near the bridge. Apart from occasional scorch marks around access panels where the EPS grid overloaded, the structure of the corridor is intact and Michael automatically lists potential improvements, mentally noting her approval for safety features that worked as intended, structuring her post-mission report out of habit – before she realises she has nowhere to send it. Her Starfleet is beyond the reach of communication and any future Starfleet, now, won’t have built Constitution-class for probably hundreds of years.

She keeps making her mental log anyway. Captain Pike might appreciate knowing how hard his ship fought for her life.

‘This ship is almost as depressing in the dark as it was in full colour,’ Philippa remarks over the suit comm. Her helmet light pans over black-tarnished metal and coloured accents, the cheerful orange lettering spelling out _Sickbay_ half-scorched away. ‘So garish. I would have blown it up simply because it offended my eyes.’

‘Perhaps you’d have preferred to remodel it in gold?’ Michael suggests with the barest trace of acid. She has no personal attachment to the _Enterprise_ but it is – was – a Starfleet vessel; she’s Pike’s ship. ‘I hear matching your bridge to your ostentatious outfit is really in this season.’

‘Why Michael that was almost a politician’s reply. I’m impressed.’

Knees protesting even in zero gravity, Michael sinks down to set the laser cutter against Sickbay’s door and starts to align it. Focused on connecting the battery pack, one-handed and clumsy, she doesn’t bother to glance up as she mutters: ‘Perhaps I need to spend less time around you.’

Philippa makes an amused roll of sound in her throat. ‘That seems an unlikely prospect given that your support network is down to half a ship of Starfleet idealists, one half-suffocated captain, and me.’

‘You’re part of my support network? I didn’t realise that questioning my every decision counted as support; thank you for clearing that up.’

Philippa’s helmet obscures most of her face but the tilt of her head conveys the idea of a supercilious expression well enough. ‘I question your decisions only when they go against your better interests, Michael. That you make so many questionable decisions is on you.’

And oh, reconciliation on the transporter pad aside, that _stings_. Michael works on calibrating the cutter in furious silence for a minute, one good hand clumsy in her suit glove and the screen bears the brunt of it, stabbing at the settings stiff-fingered until she’s satisfied the laser won’t harm anyone on the other side of the door when they break through. When she activates it she finally has to look away, brightness illuminating them and the corridor in a pool of stark blue-white and angled shadows, painting Philippa’s suit into alien contours.

The darkness that lurks at the edges of the light isn’t quite as terrifying as it’d been half an hour ago. Perhaps it’s that she’s not struggling to find the captain, alone with her own fear for what she might find.

Or perhaps it’s that she knows Philippa is more terrifying than any monsters lurking out of sight.

‘You are upset with me questioning the logic of your decisions,’ Philippa says after a long, awkward moment. Her voice, in all likelihood, is incapable of _contrite_ but it is at least… neutral.

Struggling to form an answer that won’t come out barbed, Michael watches the edges of the laser’s brightness waver until white spots glitter behind her eyelids when she blinks. It reminds her of the time jump, the rippling tear in space that snatched her in like falling sideways over a limitless cliff, falling between the spark-woven fabric of the universe that threatened to set her alight. Only the anchor of _Discovery_ kept her steady in the freefall, holding back the scream behind her clenched teeth because they were trusting her to guide them through, trusting her word that she could pilot experimental tech she’d never tested just because her mother did it, once.

She’d drowned her doubt in the certainty of science, because it was the only route to save everything she cared about and that was enough, justification for the decision to throw herself unhesitating, body and soul through the dark.

(Like she’d thrown herself into Vulcan’s Forge as a child because it was _the only way_ , ran from her sobbing brother who’d only wanted to help. She’d nearly ruined him, and started a war, and had her heart broken, and- and _died,_ but- reason was a path, her own light to follow in the dark and if she’d died for good then the fault would’ve been in how she followed it, nothing more. If she went back in time to make the exact opposite of her decisions they’d likely _all_ be dead; what’s heartbreak, set against that?

And anyway, it all worked out. In the end.)

Michael trusts the logic that guides her actions; logic is her bedrock, where she can plant her feet and know that in a senseless universe, she can at least make sense of herself. Philippa might call it reckless but the more people included in a course of action, the less certainty in the outcome, and Michael prefers to limit the variables. Tackling problems head on, direct action that relies on herself first — it’s who she _is_.

The difference, she still forgets, is that these days when she throws herself into the fire there’s a whole crew of people who’ll throw themselves in to burn with her, and they’re not as easily dissuaded as a small, lonely boy.

‘They’re my decisions and they’re the best ones I can make at the time to achieve the required outcome,’ she says eventually. It comes out tireder than she intended. ‘Don’t try telling me that you’d stand for anyone always insisting that you’re wrong.’

Philippa shrugs. ‘People tend to have less opinions after you cut out a few tongues for voicing them. I suspect that isn’t a course of action _you’re_ willing to pursue.’

‘Must be another one of my gaping character flaws.’

The ship creaks around them, vibration through the deck as something possibly breaks away from the shattered edges or another deck vents atmosphere; they fall quiet for a moment, alert, Michael watching the cutter readouts to check there’s nothing suggesting the pressure on the other side of the door’s changed. At this point she’s almost too tired to wonder who they’ll find when they break through. Some of _Discovery_ ’s crew, those who’d chosen not to come to the future or weren’t needed to pilot the defence shuttles, had been aboard but the _Enterprise_ had a full crew complement so the odds favoured one or more of them. Perhaps it would ease the unexpected stranding for Pike if he has some of his own crew around.

She has a startled moment to assess the scale of her own investment in Pike’s happiness before Philippa distracts her by clumping over, slow in magnetic boots. It shouldn’t be possible to lounge insouciantly against a wall in zero gravity; it’s Michael’s turn to be almost impressed.

‘I do not question your actions out of spite, Michael.’ There’s an odd note to Philippa’s voice even over the tinny comm, the faintest edge of strain as if she’s biting her tongue on the sharp edges, taking the time to think the response through. ‘When I told you that you had a martyr complex that was an observation, not an insult.’

‘I rather think it was both.’

Light moves across Philippa’s suit (likely another shrug; Michael’s not certain she knows how to flinch).

‘Hard truths can be uncomfortable to hear,’ she says, ‘but that does not make them less true for it.’

Michael taps to adjust the laser intensity settings so hard she’s briefly afraid she’s cracked the screen. She can’t believe they’re doing this _now_ , hearing her voice come out pitched too high with strain: ‘True doesn’t make them _helpful_.’

‘It is always helpful to know yourself.’ Philippa huffs a sigh, as if _Michael’s_ the one being intractable. ‘I am doing my best to help you. You may not want to listen but that is what I was attempting to do before the battle and all I mean now. In any universe, you are not good at looking out for your own best interests, Michael — at looking out for yourself at all.’

Michael twists around to glare because that’s _enough —_ ‘I look out for myself!’

‘Oh you _really_ don’t,’ Tilly chimes in, unexpected, to a round of frantic shushing over-

 _Oh_ _no._ Over the mortifyingly _still open_ comm. Which means the entire bridge crew has been listening to their every word.

Michael has to take several deep meditation breaths to keep from shouting at everyone to stop – what was that word Amanda always used? - _mollycoddling_ her. The problem with the microcosm of starships is that the best entertainment is the gossip circuit, so everyone is always up in everyone else’s business and now if Michael asks them to mute the channel they’ll all sit there on the bridge, discussing it. Forming _opinions_.

Michael should’ve left them all in the past.

‘See?’ Philippa waves a suited hand as if her point is made. ‘Your crew agree. Look at you, mid-rescue attempt for people you may not even know while you have only five working fingers. It pains me how terrible you are at self-preservation. You think of everyone else first and yourself last.’

It probably won’t help to throw the laser cutter at her, but Michael has to clench her good hand to a fist to resist the urge to test that hypothesis. Tension barely leashed, she bites out, ‘You say that as if it’s a bad thing but it’s called choosing to support the well-being of others over being selfish. It’s called _having friends._ ’

‘Really?’ Philippa says and the silky note of triumph in it signals her winning argument, the hunter sighting her kill. ‘If you were looking out for your friend’s best interests Michael, then you would care how your death would emotionally impact them rather than throwing yourself with heroic stupidity in front of every single enemy phaser for the “ _greater good_ ”.’ She reclines back against the wall, tilted lazily against the anchor of her boots as her voice curls around _good_ like a curse. ‘I blame Starfleet for instilling all these nonsensical notions like _honour_ in your head. If nothing else I had hoped Lorca might have inspired some more useful survival instincts in you, but they had to replace him with Pike of all people.’

Michael goes still, inside and out.

‘And what,’ she says, dangerously soft, ‘do you propose is wrong with Captain Pike?'

Philippa makes an audible _tch_ of disapproval. ‘Nothing is wrong with him, that is the heart of the problem. All that inflexible sense of right versus wrong, all that self-sacrificing nobility of purpose. Don’t misunderstand me, such people have their uses and they are _delightfully_ predictable but they lack- intrigue.’

Her voice dips into something sharper again, honed to cut. ‘They also do not know how to react when they see the knife coming and so they have an unfortunate habit of ending up prematurely dead.’

Michael’s glad for her mirrored faceplate because she’s sure the uncomfortable flip of stomach at that is clearly written in her wince.

‘That’s where your argument falls down then,’ she observes, careful. ‘The captain is very much alive.’

_I hope._

‘Not for want of trying. I’ve read the mission reports; he’s nearly died multiple times even only since assuming command of _Discovery_ and I am concerned he is only exacerbating your self-destructive tendencies. Killing yourself on Essof IV, simply to lure in the Red Angel? Really, Michael. What kind of captain would agree to such an act?’

‘He tried to talk me out of that,’ Michael says, forcing her voice to stay level. Tried over and again, and tried to apologise after, eyes lined with worry even when she hadn’t wanted to hear it because she was infuriated at being kept from visiting her mother. She’s suddenly glad that he isn’t on _Discovery’s_ bridge right now, listening to Philippa’s assessment and feeling guilty all over again.

‘You have him all wrong,’ she says, wonders too late if she should’ve toned down the defensive note, ‘he’s never encouraged me to do anything dangerous. Exactly the opposite.’

‘No. He only leaps headfirst into it himself, never thinking what you may be learning from such an example.’

Leaps headfirst into phaser blasts to the chest, into asteroid fields and forbidden Klingon monasteries, time distortions and fire fights. Michael thinks of the tired, strangely wistful distance he’d worn around him the last few days as he tied up the loose ends of his captaincy in snatched quiet moments between evacuations and fire fights. There’s been no mention of him coming with them but he’d made it clear it wasn’t because he didn’t care, with the simple sincerity of the way his voice broke on _goodbye_.

‘We learned the values Starfleet strives to embody every day,’ Spock says abruptly over the comm. Michael had forgotten he’d be listening — probably seething, which for Spock means frowning fractionally harder — to all this too. ‘Is that not correct, Michael?’

She breathes out her tension. ‘Correct.’

Philippa sighs with all the weary patience of a parent asked for the hundredth time if dinner can be ice cream.

‘The phaser does not care that you have jumped in front of it with noble purpose,’ she says, tone superior. ‘It makes you dead and continues to kill everyone you left behind when you can no longer stop it. You should learn that caring about your survival matters, to others as well as yourself.’

‘I suspect you will find that Michael’s survival matters to many more of us than yours, Captain Georgiou.’

‘Spock,’ Michael says softly, warning, but Philippa only laughs.

‘So the halfbreed has teeth. Maybe he can teach you that caring if you survive means making sure that before an enemy pulls out a phaser, you already have a knife to their throat.’

Spock doesn’t answer — probably heeding Michael’s warning — and she looks back to the cutter, the glowing molten line of metal giving way slow, too slow when all she wants to do is flee to somewhere quiet and safe and free of Terran emperors refusing to take the hint and shut up. It’s been a long day and she’s so tired of feeling eviscerated by her own emotions: from believing she was leaving behind everything she loved to be alone (again) and the rush of dizzying gratitude at finding out everything she loved stubbornly had other ideas; watching the _Enterprise_ die; the blinding terror and wonder that was the time jump itself; the relentless fear of the rescue. The grinding pain of her broken hand as sharp as the burn of tears she’s blinking back.

She has nothing left for a character assassination of herself in the still, exposed silence of a dead starship, or at least not when it’s presented in Philippa’s unflinching honesty. Even if she half-believes that it’s well-intentioned (as much as Philippa ever is), it has less tact and kindness of Sarek on his worst days.

For all that she’s glad he isn’t listening she suddenly realises that she misses Pike’s steady warmth, the trustworthiness of it at her back. Tendencies to dive headfirst in danger or not, he’d have read her fast-diminishing resiliance in her voice by now and pulled them back on task to give her a reprieve.

‘You make it sound easy,’ she says and her voice does crack, now, catches hard when she swallows to steady it. ‘It isn’t. Not when you have to account for more people than only yourself.’

Philippa snorts. ‘It is very easy. You have done it yourself. Starfleet’s first mutineer they called you, do you remember?’

‘I suspect if I had, you’d remind me,’ Michael mutters.

‘Such nonsense. All you were doing was taking control of the situation because their inadequate rules were going to get you and them all killed. Your Georgiou-’

‘ _Captain_ ,’ Michael snaps, automatic through the cold sinking down to her bones as if she’s been opened up to the vacuum of space. She doesn’t want to be having this conversation but _fuck_ , everyone is listening – if she snaps any further, it’ll be with an audience and she _can’t_. ‘ _Captain_ Georgiou.’

Philippa’s hand wave dismisses the consideration. ‘She could have been three times admiral and it would not have made a difference. She did not understand the situation because Starfleet is not equipped to think of anything other than peace even when they can see the knife already moving. She was a co-’

‘ _Stop talking.’_

Michael’s voice comes out hard and laced in frost, cold to her core as she closes her eyes and tries to breathe around the tightness like a weight on her chest. She can’t trust her own actions if she’d let Philippa finish the word _coward_.

‘That’s enough,’ she manages, finally. She’s shaking, fury roiling cold under her skin all over and the suit flashing a warning, _user distress_ , across the HUD. ‘If you’re here to help, then do that _silently_ by making yourself useful doing what you’re supposed to be doing and setting up the temporary airlock.’

Philippa hums something that could be an agreement or could equally be exasperation, and pushes away from the wall toward the emergency rescue pack she’d been carrying with the cutter, left floating across the corridor. On the way past she lifts her hand as if contemplating patting Michael’s shoulder – bad idea; Michael’s broken one hand already today and she’s angry enough to crush another, regardless of if it’s hers.

As if she’s finally sensed the mood, Philippa’s hand only hovers a moment before she reconsiders and lets it drop.

Instead she says, quieter over her shoulder as she reaches the pack and snaps it open: ‘All I am trying to say Michael is that you clearly had survival instincts once, before Starfleet told you that you should have allowed your ship to be destroyed against what you knew was right. Since we look to be trapped here without their meddling for the forseeable future, I’m only advising you to work on prioritising your survival.’

When Michael doesn’t reply she sighs again — heavy, exasperated with a favoured underling’s intransigence — adds, ‘And since it is obvious to everyone that you’ll throw yourself into an entire fleet of wrecked starships for him should the situation arise and no doubt get yourself killed in the process – at least _try_ to convince your stupidly noble captain to take better care of himself.’

Michael doesn’t want to give her the satisfaction of agreeing (honestly, she’d be perfectly happy with confining the captain safely in his quarters for the next nine centuries after he’d fought so hard to suffocate in that damn escape pod, but she doesn’t want Philippa to think she’s right about _one_ thing, because Philippa will take that as being right about _everything_ _)._

‘I would have thought you’d prefer him gone,’ she says instead, tries not to let it be bitter, ‘what with all that self-sacrificing nobility getting in our way.’

‘From what I read in the classified files, last time you lost a captain you tried to crawl into a prison cell until you died.’ Philippa manages to imply the impression of rolling her eyes even facing away, breezy tone dismissing the worst months of Michael’s life as an overreaction. ‘Perhaps reflecting on how you would feel if you lost this one will make you think twice about how your friends feel, the next time you idiotically throw yourself into a nest of snakes to keep them from eating everyone else.’

Which is when Tilly, because she’s a wonderful person and Michael’s favourite and she’s probably aware that they’re approximately zero point five seconds from being minus one former Terran emperor, clears her throat loudly over the comm.

‘Okay!’ she says, over-bright, ‘Sorry to interrupt this perfectly horrifying conversation that we’re only listening to because protocol forbids me from turning the channel off when you’re over there without life support but Michael can we get an update on er I don’t know, how Sickbay door’s holding up, or the structural integrity of the _Enterprise_? Maybe the weather?’

Michael takes back everything she thought about leaving them in the past for eavesdropping; she loves them and their interfering nosiness so much, she has to pause to get a grip on her urge to burst into relieved tears and pack it down tight before she can speak.

‘Breaking through into Sickbay is going slower than expected,’ she says when she’s sure she’s compartmentalised her feelings far enough down. ‘The readouts say we’re only twenty-two percent of the way through the first set of blast doors and I think-’ She taps the display panel and a thin film of ice crackles free. Damn. ‘Tilly, I think the heater on the battery pack is malfunctioning. Do we have a backup you could beam across?’

‘Oh sure, I’ll go dig one out. Give me two ticks.’

There’s a leaden pause that sounds distinctly like hesitation and then Detmer’s voice, whispering faintly - ‘ _I’ll- you up if – say anything interesting_ ’ and Michael sighs, tempering _Tilly is my favourite_ against how excruciatingly awkward it’ll be next time she’s drifting to sleep in their quarters, only to have Tilly, inevitably, ask ‘ _So, do you want to talk about it?’_

Tilly’s not great at taking _no_ for an answer – case in point, _Discovery_ ’s crew being here instead of Michael alone; there’s no way that wasn’t Tilly’s suggestion first, even if the others would’ve thought of it later – and she has an uncanny knack of noticing things about Michael that she’d thought she’d hidden, and then _worrying_ about them. Michael always reassuring her that there’s nothing wrong only for Tilly to look at her as sadly as she looks at a flawed equation, worry writ all over her slumped shoulders and Michael hates the way it trips up the words in her response, emotion gone awkward and unwieldy in her chest.

She doesn’t like people worrying about her. Having people worried feels like she’s failed without even trying.

 _Maybe there’s some way to distract them_ , she thinks as she tries to recalibrate the power settings to coax the battery pack to keep going in the meantime, studiously ignoring Philippa clumping past to set the temporary field emitters. From past experience she knows what Tilly’s like when she’s focused on a problem and, thanks to Philippa, right now that problem’s shaping up to be _Michael._ With a whole future empty of distractions in the form of Starfleet intrigue, or ship-to-ship rivalries, or updates to the ranking system of which admirals make the Top Ten Hottest List – the knowledge of which Michael will happily offer to the Talosians next time as her most traumatic memory on the condition that they promise to delete it permanently afterward – she’s going to be everyone’s only gossip distraction unless she misdirects it.

Surely almost a thousand years into the future, either the dead technological wasteland that her mother found or a new future shaped by their actions, there’ll be entertainment to be found _somewhere_. Michael escaped at least half a dozen awkward conversations about her relationship with Spock in the month Tilly and Detmer spent obsessed with that Andorian docudrama about highly questionable lawyers. Under duress, Michael watched one episode with them until they kicked her out for complaining that it was illogical for lawyers to try to seduce a witness to obtain evidence as it invalidated their entire case.

When Michael tried explaining her bewilderment to the captain over lunch the following day, he’d only laughed, said, ‘If that’s what they think being arrested on Andoria looks like I can confirm that they’d be disappointed’ and, no matter how much Michael pressed, refused to elaborate further.

(If she had less scruples, there’s her solution to both punishment for the panic he’d caused her earlier and how to distract Tilly. Even implying the captain was once arrested on Andoria would keep the gossip circuit distracted for weeks – but she already knows that she won’t say a word. Perhaps that’s why she ends up as everyone’s favourite gossip magnet so often; she’s no good at betraying confidences to misdirect the rumours away from herself.

Or just maybe – though everything in her rebels at acknowledging it – it’s because Philippa has a point about her propensity to throw herself into every new danger that comes along, and they live such ridiculously dangerous lives it makes her a reliable source of entertainment.)

At that moment Philippa makes a satisfied ‘Ah-hah!’ from behind her. Michael has a second to panic that she’s been voicing her thoughts aloud before there’s a hum through the deck plate under her boots, the emitters activating their pocket of artificial gravity and life support.

Immediately all Michael’s aches triple as she has to hold herself up, her fractured fingers resettling painfully inside her glove. From the way Philippa limps slightly as she walks over to lean back against the wall this time, she didn’t make it through the wormhole unscathed either and Michael remembers her bruised face.

She makes an educated guess, ventures onto neutral ground to break the awkward silence. ‘What happened with Leland?’

Philippa makes another satisfied sound, this one almost a purr.

‘Remember your trick with Gant? Thanks to your warning about Leland potentially boarding _Discovery_ , myself and your charming security officer had time to prepare a little welcome present for our friend before we dropped our shields to let you leave. He had some, ah- _objections_ , but we were able to persuade him into our trap and it was goodbye Captain Leland.'

She slinks down to a crouch beside Michael, working one leg out in a stretch with a soft hiss that means it hurts and whatever Michael might’ve said next freezes numb on her tongue — because it’s an abruptly uncanny echo of _her_ Philippa, that time she tore a muscle running for their lives from a first contact gone sideways. Michael’s thoughts trip over the memory like stubbing her mental toes, grief seizing briefly beneath her ribs as it does sometimes when she least expects it.

(Sometimes she misses the uncomplicated wonder of being the _Shenzhou’s_ first officer so much that she _aches_.)

Then -‘It was as satisfying as I anticipated to watch him come apart, piece by piece,’ Philippa adds with a curl of vicious satisfaction and she’s all Terran again, Michael abruptly back in the wreck of the _Enterprise_ , her stomach rolling at the memory and the leftover grief. It’s pushed out of sight into the corners of herself these days, dulled now that it’s burned down to embers and she can mostly forget that it’s there – at least when she isn’t looking directly at the Terran Philippa or trying to save yet another captain, events stirring the fire back up to immolate her when she least expects it.

But Pike’s _fine_ even if she can’t reach out to reassure herself of that right now, pulled to safety as surely as their Philippa had made it through that particular mission all those years ago. It caught her off guard so soon after the panic of finding him, that’s all, and with Pike safe and this same-yet-different Philippa being a constant presence on board, it won’t take long to learn to anticipate her reactions.

To get a handle on them before they can poleaxe her like this. She’s fine.

‘Michael?’ Spock murmurs over the comm. ‘Your heart rate is spiking. Is everything-’

‘I’m _fine_ Spock,’ she cuts him off, takes a few deep breaths until she has a better hold of herself. Brushing more ice from the side of the cutter, she has to fist her good hand against the trembling.

‘At least we don’t have to worry about him – about Control – here. Thank you,’ she adds belatedly, forcing herself to glance over at Philippa, to be centred in the here and now. ‘Trust me when I say it would’ve been catastrophic for all of us if he’d reached the bridge.’

Philippa shrugs. ‘Your thanks is not necessary, I have been looking forward to crushing the problem that was Leland for a long time. Usually I like a snake in a man’s clothing but he was nowhere near as subtle as he thought. It was like watching a Klingon try to perform delicate surgery with a bat’leth.’

‘Now _there’s_ an image I want to frame and fire into the nearest black hole so I never have to imagine it ever again,’ an EV-suited Tilly says brightly as she steps through the field into their temporary airlock. The instant gravity kicks in she almost drops the new laser cutter she’s holding, an ungraded heavy duty version of the one slowly spluttering out despite Michael’s best efforts. ‘Phew, I gotta go back to lifting weights-’ She almost trips backwards as Philippa lunges for the cutter. ‘Hey!’

‘You were about to drop it, I was only-’

‘Did you just make grabby hands at my fancy new laser?’ Tilly cuts her off, swaying in a way that implies she’s probably trying to wave said object threateningly. The effect is somewhat diminished when she can’t hoist it higher than her knee. ‘We’ll be having no grabby hands from scary emperors when my nerves are already shot from this creepy as fu- as frick ship, thank you! Michael tell her.’

Because she’s utterly, all-encompassingly glad to see Tilly, Michael obediently says ‘No grabby hands,’ before she registers what just came out of her mouth, pictures the precise expression she knows Spock will be making on the other end of the comm, and winces internally. She’s not living that one down.

‘Tilly,’ she says hastily, ‘you didn’t have to come yourself. You could’ve sent Nhan, or beamed it to us.’

Tilly starts to haul the new cutter over to the door, giving the scowling Philippa deliberately wary berth. ‘I didn’t want to risk beaming it on top of your heads, and Nhan is having her broken leg reset by a Dr Pollard on hour thirty-one of sleep deprivation, so it’s more than anyone’s life is worth to go near our Sickbay right now. Except for the captain, and I bet _he’s_ only escaping the lecture about carelessly inconveniencing our good doctor by damaging himself because he’s already unconscious.’

Michael’s stomach rolls again. ‘He’s still unconscious?’

‘Yeah but it’s okay, the doc seemed to think it was normal. It’s a bummer he can’t tell us who’s trapped over here but I’m not letting myself worry because frankly, I think today’s burned through all the stress hormones I have available for the next nine hundred years.’ Tilly eases the cutter down beside Michael with a sigh and flashes her a tired smile through her illuminated faceplate, tone quieting into something warm, the verbal equivalent of a hug. ‘We also thought maybe you could use a hand so here I am, hi Michael. Fancy meeting a girl like you in a terrifying wrecked spaceship like this.’

‘I should have let Leland kill me,’ Philippa mutters. ‘Would it be at all possible to hurry this up? I have a whole new future to be conquering you know.’

‘Now she’s making grabby hands at the entire future,’ Tilly stage-whispers to Michael as they start to setup the new laser. As glad as she is to have Tilly here, Michael’s already closing her eyes in resignation before Philippa’s halfway through a derisive snort.

‘I am surprised you have a problem with that – in my universe, Sylvia Tilly was all about the, as you say, _grabby hands_. We had quite the time of it together, taking everything that we wanted.’

Tilly makes a soft, terrorised sound low in her throat. ‘I- I did not need to be reminded that my Terran self was the _worst_ , thank you.’

‘Do not do yourself a disservice,’ Philippa says and flashes a smile that’s all teeth through her faceplate. ‘She was far from being my worst.’

Stamets’ voice, unexpected over the comm, cuts through Tilly’s moan of despair. ‘As much as we’re all enjoying this verbal death match on, as Tilly pointed out, over thirty hours of sleep deprivation, perhaps we can get an update on you know, the tiny inconsequential rescue mission taking place?!’

‘New cutter in place and engaged,’ Michael says. It comes out sounding as weary as she feels. ‘Short of needing a second away team to rescue _us_ if internal diplomatic relations break down any further, we should be through both sets of doors in-’ She checks the display, clear of ice and counting down much faster this time. ‘Approximately five minutes.’

‘Okay, keep us posted. And Michael-’

‘I’ll update you on who’s in there as soon as we’re through, Mr Stamets,’ Michael says into the pause, and hears the slow exhale, steadying, before Stamets answers.

‘Thanks, Michael.’

‘Oh,’ Tilly says softly, her hands stilling mid-calibration of the new cutter. ‘Do you think...’

‘Maybe. It’s as likely as anyone else who was on board.’ Michael tries to keep her tone neutral, knowing the comm’s still open – knowing that out of the hundreds of crew members aboard the _Enterprise_ before the battle, any of them are _as likely_ to be the ones in Sickbay. She’s been given her mother back, and the captain, and Spock, and even Philippa in a way but she’s under no illusions about the relativity of her luck; the universe isn’t in the habit of handing back things someone was careless enough to lose. If the grand design the captain is so fond of does indeed have a hand behind it, she doesn’t believe it can be kind.

 

The universe repays her lack of faith four minutes and thirty-four seconds later when they lever open the Sickbay doors and a phaser blast sprays sparks from the wall next to Philippa’s head.

Tilly yelps and ducks. Michael’s instantly reaching to her hip for a weapon that isn’t there, panic ratcheting up to critical as she fumbles for a plan because Control could have infected _anyone_ in addition to Leland, hiding on the _Enterprise_ was an entirely reasonable back up plan for a murderous AI who always seemed one step ahead, they need to beam out and blow up what’s left of the ship _now-_

Which is when Philippa, standing at relaxed parade rest in the doorway, who hadn’t so much as flinched from the shot, flips up her faceplate and calls,

‘If you have finished establishing your superiority over the wall, would you like to be rescued or should we leave you to enjoy your excruciating death from running out of air?’

‘Captain Georgiou?’

The voice is bewildered, muffled by Michael’s helmet and disbelief. It’s only when a familiar head pops up over the nearest biobed that her brain catches up with her ears.

‘Dr _Culber_?’ she says, startled into mistrust by the coincidence – by the same miracle twice. Over her comm, from _Discovery,_ there’s a cracked sob around a question but she’s not confirming anything until she’s sure –

Dr Culber clambers unsteadily to his feet, peering at them in the half-dimness of the emergency lighting, monitors casting a washed-out glow over the square of gauze taped lopsided to his forehead. It’s that, the splotch of crimson on white and the cautious, dazed look he wears as he scans over the three of them – the way his face falls when he doesn’t find the one person he’s looking for – which convinces Michael it’s not Control, that the AI wasn’t just listening to their conversation in the corridor and changed form accordingly.

‘Michael?’ It’s Stamets, whispering over the comm. ‘Michael, is it-’

‘Yes, Mr Stamets,’ she confirms, quiet around a slow-dawning smile and sudden release of tension, all her muscles unclenching as adrenaline fades and her knees go unsteady in a wash of calm that’s bewildering, unfamiliar after weeks on edge. If she believed in a higher power she’d think _thank you —_ as it is, she allows herself to exhale fully for what feels like the first time in weeks and says, tone wondering, ‘It’s him.’

_And it’s finally over._

Which is the point when Tilly, helmet off, calls cheerfully ‘Hey Dr Culber, good job you’re handier with a hypospray than a phaser, eh? Boy do I know someone who’s going to be happy to see-’ only to cut off into a scream as a sheet-draped form on a nearby biobed sits up abruptly. ‘- _oh my god_ what’s that, are the dead _walking_ -’

‘Tilly?!’ the sheet asks and Michael has a second to be incredulous before it’s yanked down to reveal Po, half-falling, half-limping off the bed and across Sickbay to collide with Tilly halfway, combined joy of _I didn’t know you were here/we thought you were Control so we hid/I can’t believe you’re here_ expressed at a pitch that makes Michael want to laugh and wince at the same time.

From beside her, watching the flailing tumble of red hair and black mingling as Tilly trips on the trailing sheet and both her and Po go down in a shrieking, hugging heap, Philippa rolls her eyes.

‘Now that,’ she remarks, ‘is what _I_ call “ _grabby hands_ ”.’

 

*

 

The away mission where Michael’s first Philippa hurt her leg wasn’t supposed to be anything memorable.

It’d been to a jungle planet, just over a year since Michael joined the _Shenzhou._ The air was muggy with the heat and sweat ran down Michael’s spine beneath her uniform, beaded damp at Philippa’s temples, slicking tiny curls of hair free to frame her professional Starfleet smile as they waited through the interminable speeches. The welcome reception for Starfleet was being held in an open plaza, a platform formed of beautifully interwoven resin-grasses suspended just above the shallow lake that lay beneath the largest native city – the De’tilok were an arboreal species, their city’s winding ‘streets’ a complex network of arcing bridges and platforms high overhead and crammed with crowds watching the ceremony, suspended in the graceful, intertwined trees they worshipped as gods.

That was what caught them out, the initial survey team’s report failing to equate worship of _these particular trees_ with _all trees._ When a senior De’tilok noticed that one of the ensigns, there to observe what should’ve been the amicable signing of a treaty of non-aggression, was wearing a bracelet of wooden beads – a family heirloom, Michael found out later – all hell broke loose.

At the De’tilok’s undulating alarm call the away team had scattered from the rain of projectiles from above, Philippa dragging Michael over the edge of the grass-platform and into jungle-warm, thigh-deep lake water as they shouted over the comm for an emergency transport. Wading away from the enraged Tilockians until the _Shenzhou_ could pull them out, Philippa caught her foot in a submerged tree root.

In her dreams Michael still feels the muscle-memory, the sudden yank on her hand as her captain went down face-first in the silt-dark water. The way fear tasted sour on her tongue in the instant before she hauled Philippa upright with a bruising-frantic grip. The way her captain surfaced muddy head to toe and exasperated but not shot as Michael thought, spluttering curses as her leg gave way beneath her on the transporter pad.

The torn muscle ached for weeks afterward; she’d stretch it out in the captain’s chair, careful, the muffled hiss of pain pinned quiet between her teeth. If she caught Michael’s concerned look she laugh it off, joke that she’d only been throwing herself in front of one of the giant venomous eels that lived in the lake to save Michael single-handed – pointing out that made it a noble war wound rather than her own clumsiness.

Laughing about it allowed them both to pretend that she wasn’t leaning on Michael for support whenever they had to walk to the briefing room, elbows linked steady and warm. Philippa never acknowledged it beyond a brief smile of thanks every time she pressed into Michael, close contact shoulder to hip. Never treated it as anything unusual or referenced it later as her leg healed and she was able to move back to a respectable distance, rebuilding the symbolic inches of space between captain and subordinate.

Later, before the end, Michael wasn’t certain Philippa even remembered their hands tangled tight in the mud, the easy, rueful way she leaned into the line of Michael’s body for weeks after. It wasn’t remarkable, after all. Starfleet officers did the same every day, and thought nothing of it, support offered on a whim and forgotten just as easily.

It stands out in Michael’s memory, a way-marker, as clear and defined as it was the day Philippa caught her hand.

It was the first time anyone other than Sarek or Amanda had touched her in years.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please note that I ship Tilly/Po with the fire of a sun gone supernova and I was perplexed that the show broke it up because I was pretty sure that was where that was going. They will show up in future fics; I'll try to tag the specific fics for it if that's not your thing.
> 
> -  
> I cheerfully made up the temporary airlock because I needed it to be a thing. That's how science works, right? 
> 
> I also made up the show about Andorian lawyers and possibly that Star Trek even has ridiculous shows about implausible characters doing slightly illegal things by this century but if you're telling me the crews of starships don't hang out in the rec room on their down shifts and mainline the latest Game of Thrones equivalent so they can dissect it over their PADD's chat function, I won't believe you (or I'll at least be sad in your general direction). Even these adorable nerds need something to do when they've exhausted the contronym game.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Everyone puts on grown up pants and talks about their feelings. There's a lot of them. By which I mean, I'm really really sorry this is so long; I had A Lot of Conversations that I wanted to see in s2 but we got space battles instead. Space battles are cool and all, but feelings are where it's at.

* * *

 

Much later, after explanations that come out half-garbled by exhaustion and layered into a blur of voices where Michael catches one word in three, she gathers that Po beamed over to _Enterprise_ just before the balance of the fight tipped against them _;_ after tears from Tilly – ‘Happy tears, Michael, so fu- fricking _happy_ ’; after a scolding from Saru for the state of her hand during a briefing she mostly sleepwalks through, Dr Pollard catching her with a hypospray that dulls the grind of bones in her fingers until they hurt less than the worry, slow-burning in her chest –

\- after all that, at the end of a day that lasted over nine hundred years, Michael steals out of her biobed in _Discovery_ ’s Sickbay.

Medical advice was for her to rest but all she’s managed is lying awake, fretting behind her closed eyelids. It’s frustrating when there’s no logical reason for sleep to elude her – the lights are dimmed to the night cycle, everyone taking twelve hours downtime to parse the situation now no one’s actively trying to kill them. Po had discharged herself, still limping, for a post-time travel debrief with Tilly that sounded like veiled cover for a slumber party with ice cream, Nhan using the distraction to trail on her crutches after Philippa, when the former emperor slunk out of Sickbay with a pensive look that Michael’s too tired to worry about right now, for all that she’s certain it means trouble. Dr Pollard was ordered off to finally catch some sleep and Dr Culber disappeared ‘for a five minute chat’ with Stamets over two hours ago so Sickbay’s left near-deserted, filled only with the muted glow of the monitors and the hush of a peaceful starship.

Which at least means there’s no one to see Michael give in to temptation and pace silent on bare feet across to the other occupied biobed.

Pike’s asleep, pale in the soft illumination from the monitors displaying his heart rate and breathing, stable oxygen saturation, numbers measuring a steady affirmation of life. Locating a visitor’s chair in the office Michael carries it over, awkward with the bulky cast encasing her hand but she manages with only minor bruising to her shins which frankly, after the day she’s had, barely registers.

Finally, feeling like she’s been chewed up and spat out by a gormagander, she settles herself into the uncomfortable contours of the chair and allows herself to watch her captain’s chest (now safely hidden behind the standard medical gown that manages to be unflattering on anyone else), the steady rise and fall of his breathing easing the fear that’s been a knot in her stomach for days.

 

 

‘The captain’ll be okay,’ Dr Culber had reassured her as he’d set her hand earlier; he'd caught up with Pollard while Michael sleepwalked through her own briefing. ‘We won’t know for certain if there’s lasting effects of the oxygen deprivation until he wakes up but all of you did a good job getting him out in time. He’s going to be fine.’

‘Except for being almost a thousand years from where he wanted to be,’ Michael had murmured. In response Culber hesitated, glanced over at Stamets talking to Po and Tilly by the door between frequent glances their way that weren’t anywhere near as subtle as he probably intended.

‘I tried to come back to Discovery during the fight,’ he’d said after a minute where he fussed needlessly with her hand brace. The words were so soft, she almost missed them. ‘Did you know that?’

‘No,’ Michael replied, startled. She’d been out of it during the briefing but she was sure she would’ve caught that, if only from Stamets’ reaction. ‘I thought you’d decided to stay with the _Enterprise_?’

‘I did- I mean, I had. I was in the _Enterprise’s_ Sickbay ready to help with the casualties once the fight started, when their doctor came over to ask what was wrong with me that they’d kicked me off _Discovery_.’

Michael suppressed a smile. ‘Sounds like he went to the Dr Pollard School of Bedside Manner’

‘Some days it seems like most of my Starfleet colleagues went there and they think I’m strange for saying good morning instead of greeting them with how many of my crew have injured themselves doing something idiotic since the last time we talked.’ Dr Culber sounded rueful but his professional smile flickered to something genuine at her raised eyebrow. ‘Don’t worry, I always tell them that _Discovery_ ’s crew is exemplary and never give me any trouble.’

He’d paused. ‘Also the idiotic things you all do are classified, so... _’_

She gave him her best disapproving Vulcan face mostly to make him laugh, pleased when it succeeded.

‘But you still tried to come back to us?’ she’d asked then, and almost glanced at Stamets before she controlled the urge; it would be rude to assume but… ‘...you wanted to come to the future with us? That’s a big decision to make under fire.’

‘That’s what I told their doctor, when he asked if I regretted leaving after I said it was my choice.’ Culber avoided her eyes, adjusting her hand with gentle, practiced movements. ‘ I mean of course, I told him, I was going to miss Pa- to miss all of you but there were other things to consider. Other factors. Take a breath Michael, this might feel tight at first.’

He’d activated the hand brace and the hum went through Michael like a shudder, as it always did. Sure the things healed bones in a fraction of the time but she could never quite shake the sensation that her spine was vibrating the entire time she wore one.

‘But he disagreed with you,’ she’d said through gritted teeth, tilting her head to accommodate another hypospray which _thankfully_ did something to ease the thrum in her bones. Culber fiddled with the spray casing as if adjusting the dosage and she’d been about to reassure him that she was fine when he flicked her another rueful look.

‘Not quite. He ah, asked if my choice had anything to do with a women.’

Michael winced. ‘That’s potentially awkward.’

‘Pretty much my reaction but when I said no, not really my area… he gave me this look and said, _guess it was a man who broke that heart of yours then_ .’ Culber swallowed, still turning the empty hypospray over in his hand restlessly. ‘So I said no, not quite that either. It was me who broke _his_ heart.’

‘That’s an oversimplification of an impossibly complicated situation,’ Michael said, making her voice as gentle as she knew how. ‘None of us blame you, you know. What you went through – there’s no map for that. It was always going to be something you had to deal with in your own time.’

He’d glanced at her then and she’d known the exact curl of sadness in his mouth, intimately, that feeling of trying and failing to shape a smile.

‘You know, that’s what I told myself when I left? I needed distance, to find who I was in this new context. If I stayed here I’d always be haunted by the old Hugh, this ghost I didn’t recognise. I’d never get past this feeling- like I’m a stranger in my own body.’ He’d flexed his hand on the hypospray again, watching as if his own fingers held a mystery and sighed. ‘He – their doctor – we were already up to our elbows in injured crew by then, but he stopped to push me to one side and said if I was going to be a terrible doctor then I could get out of his Sickbay.’

Michael blinked. ‘Lack of bedside manner aside, that seems – harsh.’

‘You’re telling me.’ Culber glanced toward the group at the door and away again, a shy duck of his head. ‘But you know what? He was right. When I started to tell him that he had no idea what he was talking about, he said-‘ He mimics a gruffer tone. ‘“ _son_ , if I know anything about medicine and love it’s that they both have the same goal and that’s the absence of pain”. He said that _Discovery_ might have the cure for what ails me on it, and it might not, but it was going a hell of a lot further than even a five year mission and if I realised tomorrow that I shouldn’t have let it go, that pain would be with me for the rest of my days.’

Culber paused to take a deep breath, and the line of his mouth went soft as he looked back toward the door, all the tension he’d been carrying since his resurrection eased now Michael thought to look for it. ‘He asked if I was sure that was a sentence I could live with _._ ’

Stamets had looked over at them then, a guilty flick of his gaze that flinched, caught, when he saw them already watching. Only, this time Culber smiled back at him, genuine like all the lights coming on in a brand new starship and Stamets’ mouth dropped open before he got a hold of himself, tentative dawning hope in the way he stood straighter, flushing slightly as he smiled back.

‘That’s when I realised,’ the doctor said as he tore his gaze from that luminous hope, something painfully earnest in the way he smiled to himself. ‘I could live here, on _Discovery_ , if I was wrong; I could bear it. But if I realised when it was too late that I wanted to come back, that I wanted-’

He hesitated again, finished soft as a thought given shape. ‘In realising that I couldn’t bear losing him, I realised I could bear anything else to avoid that.’

‘Was that when you tried to get back to _Discovery_?’ Michael kept her voice quiet, shared just for them; she wasn’t sure why he’d chosen her to confide in other than perhaps, after her mother, she’s the only one who could appreciate how it felt to watch time travel snatch something you loved out of reach. ‘Did you know you couldn’t? Once we were under fire our shields- changed, evolved somehow, something to do with the Sphere data - Tilly had to rewire the entire system just to drop them for a second for me to launch in the suit. There was no way you could’ve got to us.’

‘I know. I tried asking the bridge but Captain Pike told me no, it was impossible. He said sorry,’ Culber added softly. ‘As if he knew what it meant. I ran to the transporter room anyway, hoping for another miracle _…_ but as I got there the captain was already calling to abandon ship. I tried to convince the lieutenant on duty to beam me over to you but he was in the middle of trying to lock onto another distress call from a shuttle, already afraid and the evacuation was the push for him to run.’ He’d smiled crookedly. ‘He tried to get me to go too but I’ve died once already. It’s amazing how being rebuilt out of mushrooms after having your neck snapped refocuses your priorities in life or death situations.’

Michael felt her own smile go tight at the edges. ‘Dying does that.’

They’d exchanged a look, a small, bittersweet thing shared between them before the doctor cleared his throat.

‘For all the good it did me, I decided getting back here was more important than running away and giving Control target practice shooting another escape pod out of the sky. I went to the console and finished the transport that was locked in, thinking once the pad was clear I could try- I don’t know, something. Probably something stupid. Only I looked up to check I hadn’t accidentally beamed in an evil AI robot and it was Po.’

He glanced at the group by the door, Po slumped with an arm around Tilly and half-asleep with her face buried in red curls, Tilly’s hand curled secure and safe around the Xahean’s shoulders. ‘She was barely conscious, leg full of shrapnel - she told me to leave her and go but I couldn’t- and I couldn’t risk transporting her anywhere, or finding an escape pod; she’d have bled out in minutes. I got her back to Sickbay and the captain remote-activated the emergency lockdown to give me time to stabilise her. I thought I’d missed my chance.’

‘You saved her life,’ Michael corrected, and tilted her head toward Stamets, starting to drift their way with affected nonchalance. ‘And I’m hardly an expert but I’d say the chance is still there. If you want to take it.’

Culber exhaled, slow, and finally dropped the hypospray in the waste receptacle, closing his hands convulsively on the emptiness. ‘I don’t know about that — I mean I’ve already had a miracle and I wasted it, so why should I assume I’ll get it right this time?’ When he’d looked at her then it was all question, faint-edged in desperation. ‘What would you do?’

 

At the time, Michael had only smiled and pushed him gently towards the hovering Stamets, toward awkward conversations and potential, maybe; she hadn’t thought that the question applied. Not to her.

Now, hours later, she rests her bulky cast on the edge of the biobed, watches the steady rise- fall of Pike’s breathing that wouldn’t be there if she’d hesitated to question her actions for even a minute longer and thinks wryly, _What wouldn’t I do._

She can’t help speculating if Pike will appreciate the circumstances — if his smile will hold the same soft wonder as the doctor’s. He isn’t Culber, granted a miraculous wish fulfillment – he’d given no indication during their goodbyes on the bridge that he’d considered joining them – and he’s not Po, so effusively happy to see Tilly that Michael suspects some wish fulfillment there too, which might be for the best in light of their _kidnapping alien royalty_. She hopes Xahea didn’t declare war on Starfleet after they left.

Pike on the other hand was rooted firmly in the _Enterprise_ captaincy and his own crew, his inevitable march towards Starfleet admiralty. Past experience suggests he’ll make the best of the situation; optimism is his nature and she can’t imagine he’d prefer to be dead in the past than alive here. With them. Sure it’s a curveball — but the majority of the _Enterprise_ crew certainly survived, Control is dead as far as they can tell, and they saved all sentient life in the galaxy.

Plus they have a window here to find their feet, opportunity to reflect which is badly overdue for all of them since the war, since... everything. There’s a long list of upsides.

And one giant downside. Being torn over nine hundred years from everything he knew without the chance to say goodbye is a lot to balance.

It’s not unreasonable, she thinks with an edge of desperation she can’t suppress, to predict that he’ll be pleased on some level. He’d always harboured a visible disdain for Starfleet political maneuvering, despite handling it with consummate skill; the opportunity to follow the ideals they signed on for, to boldly go to the literal farthest reaches of the unknown without oversight or petty argument, wasn’t a chance that came along every day. Beyond the quiet hum of Sickbay is the future, exploration and wonder and the tantalising mystery of what happened to Starfleet in the hundreds of years they’ve side-stepped.

Perhaps when he wakes up, she’ll ask him how he’s feeling and like Culber, like Po, the answer will be… positive.

It’s been so long since she’s been able to hope without the fear of unimaginable consequences, her logic rings hollow. If he’d wanted to come with them, he’d have been on _Discovery_ in the first place; she’s never seen him flinch from what he believed to be the right path. The best she can hope for now that he’s trapped here is that he’ll be… that he might look at her with that wistful smile and say…

She’s so tired, the thought won’t finish itself. There’s an impossible tangle of feelings that comes with it, warm and heavy in her chest and she can’t find the thread to unpick it when her eyelids keep sinking. Lulled by the steady pace of Pike’s breathing, she catches her chin tipping as the last of her restless tension seeps away.

 _No._ She can’t fall asleep yet. She needs to ask Pike how he feels about the situation, what he’s going to do about the captaincy he never definitively reassigned. Why he chose not to come with them in the first place. She needs his steadiness to clarify her own thought process, the way he has countless times, be her anchor against her willingness to throw herself into the airless dark.

She needs to ask him- she needs-

She doesn’t remember her eyes closing, or sinking forward, has no idea how long she sleeps. When she resurfaces to the soft murmur of her name she’s disorientated, muzzy and when she lifts her head off the edge of the biobed it’s with a groan for the headache pressing against her temples.

‘Sorry to wake you,’ Pike says.

Pike. _Awake,_ and she snaps upright so fast her neck might regret it tomorrow.

Blinking to focus past the ache, she’s met by his quirked apology smile. It’s the one he uses to take the sting out of orders, the one she’s seen countless times when he asks her to take the graveyard shift or to supervise boring but essential repairs – or asks her to persuade Spock _not_ to supervise because he’s been known to make the Engineering ensigns cry. _If they can’t see which buttons they’re pressing through tears, they might accidentally eject the warp core and Kat bet me all her paperwork that I’d break another one_ he’d said the last time, amusement lit beneath solemnity until she couldn’t decide if he was teasing.

The same amusement glitters in his eyes now as he leans easily back against the tilt of the biobed, smile defusing the potential awkwardness of the moment as he always does. The familiarity sweeps her balance from under her, voice lost somewhere in the sudden weight beneath her ribs. She hadn’t realised how resigned she’d been to never getting to see it again.

When she stares at him longer than strictly polite, that familiar, crooked smile pulls in at the edges with concern.

‘Should I have let you sleep?’ he asks softly. ‘Sorry – you just looked like you were getting one hell of a crick in your neck.’

‘The rescue is appreciated, sir,’ she hastens to reassure him and winces at another muscle twinge when she straightens her shoulders. ‘If perhaps somewhat belated.’

This time his smile is sympathetic, crinkling tiredly at the corners of his eyes and there’s that odd flip of her heartbeat again. Perhaps she should ask Dr Pollard for a cardiac scan.

‘Sorry,’ he says. ‘Next time I’ll try to expedite regaining consciousness. Can’t have you damaging that famous Vulcan posture.’

‘I am technically almost one thousand years old if we’re going by stardates. Even Spock might grant me allowance to stoop a little,’ Michael replies dryly, and doesn’t catch her verbal misstep until his smile wipes to a shocked blank. ‘Sir, I didn’t mean – I’m sorry to drop that on you, that- that you’re on this side of the time anomaly. I assumed you knew.’

He looks away briefly, across the other empty biobeds and the dark office – before he breathes a sigh.

‘It’s okay,’ he murmurs and the smile he flashes her is genuine at least. ‘I had an inkling when I realised it was you trying to claw your way through a starship with your bare hands and not Control.’

He taps her cast lightly with a fingertip then hesitates almost imperceptibly before resting his hand on top of the cool alloy. Not quite holding hands – it’s entirely illogical to want that, Michael chides herself; she’s aware of the studies, touch proven to reduce stress hormones even when growing up in a society of touch-telepaths mostly taught her to endure without it, body perhaps craving the contact more after hours inside the rigid armour of the time suit –

But he’s still her superior officer and neither of them need to lean on each other to stay upright at this particular moment. He’s offering comfort within boundaries and she appreciates it.

‘I understood what you were trying to say,’ she offers in return, because she can hardly hold his hand but there’s still a tension lingering in his expression. ‘About Sickbay. They had less than an hour of emergency life support left – if you hadn’t been in that pod, if you hadn’t stayed conscious to tell me they were there, both Dr Culber and Her Highness Po would’ve died. Instead they’re both fine. By being here in the future you saved them,’ she adds before she catches herself on the unnecessary words, frowning. She’s not sure which of them she was trying to reassure.

In the faint glow of the monitors, she can’t read the look that flickers across his face before it turns back into a smile. ‘You were the one who saved them – all of us – Michael. I was only a messenger.’

He rubs a thumb against her cast as if he’s spotted a smudge on the smooth alloy, focusing on that instead of her eyes. And that’s familiar too, she realises with a flicker of discomfort, something she’d forgotten to account for in anticipating his response; his distance over the last few days. Avoiding her eyes more often as if watching something over her shoulder, attention divided.

She’d assumed he was naturally pulling back, preparing to leave them behind for his home on the _Enterprise_ , and she’d let it pass.

There’s nowhere else to go, now.

‘Sir?’ she asks and allows it to come out pointed.

‘So everything went as planned and we travelled into the future?’ he says, still without looking up, still distant – watching something a million light years, or perhaps nine centuries away, and Michael feels the thread of her wariness knot tighter.

‘We did. The suit and time crystal worked, once we accounted for the variance in how large the wormhole needed to be. _Discovery_ was able to follow me through without any discernible problems.’

‘Any other uninvited guests?’ He does look at her finally, a quick flash of blue edged in a rueful frown. ‘Besides me crashing the party. I don’t know if you’d already gone when the remaining Section 31 ships suddenly went dark, as if someone cut Control’s strings -’

‘We believe Philippa severed the connection when she took out Leland,’ Michael says, soft in apology for interrupting and reporting the death of someone he’d known, once. He only flicks up an eyebrow, absorbing the information.

‘Trust her to know how to decapitate an AI. Wish we’d thought of that sooner.’ He sighs again. ‘I thought we’d won the day for a moment when they all went down but then I spotted one last Section 31 shuttle still active and making a kamikaze run at the wormhole. I’d lost pretty much every critical system by that point except sublight engines, and they were running on hope and a prayer. I pointed the _Enterprise_ to intercept before I got in the escape pod, hoping we’d be in the way enough to deflect it off course for long enough. Guess I got too close?’

He looks at her expectantly and Michael automatically straightens her shoulders, falling into the pattern of reporting to her captain.

‘Yes sir,’ she says, ‘the wormhole was pulling you through after us and _Discovery_ used a tractor beam to keep you from being lost in the time ripples.’ She hadn’t known that until the briefing. Saru admitting he’d acted out of concern for what might happen to _Enterprise_ if the ship was left in the wormhole after it closed, acknowledging the possibility with an inflectionless calm that hadn’t stopped Tilly turning grey at the thought.

‘The shuttle you saw was able to follow us,’ she says and adds hastily at his flash of alarm – ‘but we had time to identify it as Section 31 and destroyed it before it could go to warp. We scanned for any other pods or ships once our sensors came back online, but it looks like everyone else stayed in the past.’

(Or were trapped in the wormhole when it closed, lost to time and space but they’d agreed in pained silence, Tilly pale and even Reno wincing, that they couldn’t do anything about it and it was better not to dwell on horrific intangibles.)

Protocol dictates that she allows him to ask questions first when reporting unless directed otherwise and although the next one is logically obvious, she pauses out of habit. He catches it, quirks her a knowing look.

‘And exactly how far in the past is that, Michael? You led us to where we wanted to be, didn’t you.’

That last isn’t a question; he assumes her competence, unhesitating.

It’s somewhat bitter to disappoint him. ‘Almost. I- we aren’t sure if our calculations were off. We haven’t had time to run a diagnostic yet...’

‘But based on the way you’re talking around the problem, you have an alternative explanation?’ he guesses, eyes kind beneath the curiosity and she gives up trying to hide it any longer, letting out the guilt that’s been coalescing under her every thought since the briefing.

‘Yes sir. I- I think I panicked. Inside the wormhole,’ she clarifies at the sudden focus of his concern. ‘The suit knew where it was going but the readings were tracking too fast for me to follow and I was having trouble breathing in the gravitational force of the rift. I’m speculating but I suspect the diagnostic will show that the suit has built-in safety features to detect potential harm to the user and it initiated a failsafe to break the jump early.’

‘How early?’ he asks – curious only, soft with the lack of judgment. She meets his gaze and he’s truly concerned now – for her only, centred outside his own thoughts for the first time in days. Present. She takes a slow breath, letting his attention anchor her against the weight of it, how far they’d come and how short it fell, and says:

‘We travelled nine hundred and twenty-seven years, seven months, three weeks, and one day into the future.’

Tilly had been disgruntled when she reported it at the briefing, unable to find a scientific explanation for them to land such a random time out of target and perplexed that Michael wasn’t more disappointed. Trying not to think too hard about how much of the error was her fault while she was too exhausted to be sure, Michael couldn’t summon a response and it took Reno intervening to deescalate the tetchy, over-tired argument, rolling her eyes and pointing out that the time crystal hadn’t overloaded on the trip like they’d expected which expanded their options.

 _It’s not stable_ she’d admitted, but offered _tomorrow, with Po here and if the rest of you take your tantrums out of our way, maybe we can calibrate it for a short hop forward_ , and that’d been the end of it, Michael not able to form her thoughts clear enough for an objection.

But now-

\- now her bones ache and Pike is watching her with familiar warm concern, and she has Spock to continue rebuilding her relationship with, and under extreme torture she might even admit that she’s happy that Philippa came with them, for all that’s going to be a full time job distracting her from trying to take over the entire future out of sheer boredom without Section 31 to hem her in.No one is trying to kill them, Michael’s not incarcerated for mutiny or at war or heartbroken, and the thought she’d been working on before she fell asleep resurfaces into a clear, decisive conclusion:

It’s not so long to wait.

Now she only has to hope that the rest of the crew agree.

‘That’s what, two years and four months, give or take, before your mother gets here?’ Pike’s concern dissolves into an unexpected smile, none of Tilly’s frustration behind it. ‘That’s a _win_ , Michael. You were piloting experimental tech without any prior training and in the whole expanse of time and space, you landed within touching distance of your target. Test pilots would be throwing a party in your honour. Be happy.’

‘I am happy,’ she says and is surprised to feel the truth of it settle inside her, curving up the corners of her mouth. ‘I’m happy we all survived. I’m happy my mother is so close and will be able to help us work out the time suit. We won this one – we’re picking up traces of warp signatures and long range transmissions so there’s life, people. No Control.’

She tilts her head, watching him start to withdraw behind his eyes again even as he smiles at her. The same distance, creeping back in – _brooding_ she’d call it, if the Tilly voice in her head wouldn’t choke out a laughing _‘hypocrite_ ’ – and he hasn’t volunteered an explanation. It’s unreasonable of her to assume she’s entitled to one.

Except- they’re still captain and science officer where it counts but there’s no Starfleet, no _Enterprise_ waiting to call him home. She thinks perhaps, in this safe pause for breath in the aftermath, she’s allowed to push those boundaries.

‘Sir,’ she says, slow, and asks what she’s been wondering for days of half-finished sentences and ducked glances. ‘I am happy, that’s true. But forgive me for saying so, you don’t seem to be.’

‘Almost a thousand years is a lot to age unexpectedly, Michael, give a man a minute to process.’

It’s said lightly but Michael, qualified expert in sidestepping inconvenient emotions, knows an evasion when she hears one. She gives him the eyebrow tilt she learned from Spock – the _Vulcan Bullshit Alarm_ Tilly calls it – and he’s clearly familiar enough with it to wince.

‘It isn’t that I’m unhappy to be alive so you can stop with the family death glare. This was- unexpected, that’s all.’

‘It was unexpected for all of-’

Mid-sentence into her instinct to press the attack, Michael cuts herself off because the expression that flashes over his face is pain, genuine and raw. It’s hastily shuttered behind the neutral mask that he’s worn for days but this is more than just Control and the time jump stranding, she’s sure now.

‘Captain,’ she tries instead and the kind expanse of her tone, encouraging the other to speak without censure, she knows she learned from him. ‘You promised once to always be honest with me in return for my confidence. If there’s something wrong, I hope you feel you can tell me. Perhaps I can help.’

The careful distance in his expression doesn’t waver, all his captain’s walls up and for perhaps the first time she finds his professionalism irritating rather than admirable.

‘Thank for the offer,’ he says, somehow cloaked in the aura of aloof captain despite the shadows of exhaustion on his face, the strange dissonance of hospital gown instead of uniform, ‘but sometimes there are things that can’t be helped by talking about them, We’d be better focusing on what we can change – have you discussed options for what you might do during the two year wait yet?’

Subject change; he’s deflecting. Interesting. ‘We thought it best to get some rest before making any definite decisions,’ Michael says, slow as she eyes him contemplatively. ‘There are variables to consider.’

‘Such as?’

Variables such as Philippa’s tone, the boredom veneered thin over perhaps genuine concern as she told Michael _you’ll throw yourself into an entire fleet of wrecked ships for him_. Of the broken bones of her hand and how much of the time she’s spent serving with him has been panic and fear, explosions in asteroid fields and phaser blasts to the chest. Of the nanobots from Gant, dropping inert just beyond the tips of her boots.

She would’ve killed Pike if she’d gone back to _Discovery_ as Control after that; she understands it in her gut where her terror sits. He would have stopped at nothing to prevent Control taking the Sphere data, she knows that with all her certainty, and once inside her head Control would’ve known it too. If there’d been anything left of her after the nanobots invaded, she would’ve had to watch her own hands fire the phaser and been powerless to stop it.

 _What wouldn’t I do_.

‘Sir,’ she says again and this time his eyes narrow suspiciously at the abruptness in her tone. ‘Before we discuss any courses of action, there’s something I think you need to understand about me. About the factors influencing my choices. There are- extenuating circumstances.’

A frown dimple forms between his brows but he’s been through enough and-another-thing about _Discovery’s_ bizarre history now to roll with it so- ‘Okay,’ he agrees, watching her with wide, wary eyes. ‘Though Michael, before you tell me anything you may regret, I feel you should also understand that I trust you implicitly and it’s unlikely anything you say at this point will convince me otherwise.’

Her heartbeat stutters again at the trust – the _faith_ – and she has to hesitate to line up her words because she’s afraid if she stumbles, she’ll hold back and that’s unacceptable.

‘You asked me if I was happy,’ she settles on after a moment to think, voice tight, ‘and I am. Specifically I’m happy that my captain is safe – that you’re safe.’

Surprise splashes across his expression; he wasn’t expecting that.

‘Michael,’ he says softly. ‘I-’

She cuts him off; there’s emotion balled in her throat and if she stops for a moment, she’ll _stop._ ‘There are issues you may not be fully aware of when it comes to myself and captains, issues that may impair my logical judgment.’ She swallows. ‘You know about Lorca, obviously, and -’

‘Philippa,’ he supplies when she falters. His voice is still soft, encouraging although he quirks a smile when she blinks at him. ‘You told me about this Michael, remember? I know we have a doppelganger.’

She had told him that part, broken Starfleet’s stringent classification of the finer details of their multiverse trip in a quiet moment, back when they still had those. She’d told him Philippa was Terran, that their own Philippa died in the war – and watching the way he’d flinched at the death of his friend she hadn’t been able to carry on with the details of how exactly it played out.

‘It was my fault.’ That lands hard, telegraphed by his sharp intake of breath. Shaking off the ever-present flare of grief, Michael forces her voice rigid. ‘I got the captain I respected more than anyone killed because I was arrogant enough to think I knew better, and then I let the next one use me for his own ends until I was no longer useful, because he played on my grief and I allowed it. And then after pulling me out of myself, giving me a hand up from rock bottom and then betraying everything I thought I’d managed to rebuild, he died too.’

She meets Pike’s gaze, the open empathy in it, and ruthlessly does not let the burn of her tears spill over.

‘As you can imagine,’ she says, ‘I have- issues when it comes to my captains dying. So when I say that I would rather I died over there on the _Enterprise_ than you – that I will make that trade every time – please understand that I mean it. I will not lose another captain on my watch.’

There’s a long pause. Michael watches the readout of his stats over his shoulder, the pulse rate skipping higher and distracts herself from tears wondering about her own, the steady thump of it beneath her skin that feels electrified, restless. She never expected to tell anyone that — barely shaped the thought of it, until she was hanging weightless in space counting the seconds until he suffocated.

There’s nothing she wouldn’t do to save him. And it would be worth it.

‘Michael...’ he starts finally, voice rough at the edges with compassion. ‘I’m sorry. I’m sorry you’ve gone through more than anyone should have to endure-’

She sits up straighter — irritated that words have failed her. ‘No, that isn’t- I didn’t tell you this for sympathy, captain.’ Even if she longs for it, the wound of Philippa’s words on the _Enterprise_ still raw – but this isn’t about her. ‘I’m telling you now because it’s pertinent to how we move forward, now that you’re here. We have multiple potential paths to follow and I would like my decision to account for your safety by factoring in all the necessary information. If you have any intentions, now that you’re here it would be helpful to know what they are – if there’s anything that’s been bothering you since-’

The word is on the tip of her tongue before her conscious thought catches up but the moment it shapes, she feels the truth of it. ‘Since Boreth?’

For a few moments, the same melancholia that he’s worn like a shield these last few days chases indecision over his face and she braces for the rejection.

Then he sighs, long and low, and his shoulders slump back against the bed, head tipping back as he mutters a Klingon curse that the computer either doesn’t recognise, or primly refuses to translate. Still staring at the ceiling, he says,

‘How did you know I was keeping something from you?’

‘Because it isn’t like you to talk in riddles and you have, ever since I got back from the encounter with Gant. I was waiting for you to offer me the answers or at least the clues, but there was no time. Also on the _Enterprise_...’ She closes her own eyes against the memory, faltering briefly. ‘You were in a much more life-threatening situation than those in Sickbay and you still tried to make me leave you to rescue them instead. It would’ve been leaving you to die.’

She opens her eyes in time to catch the stricken look that crosses his face. ‘You’re selfless and brave, captain, but to my knowledge not illogically suicidal. It was almost as if you were assured of your own safety beyond reason.’

‘In my defence I did think you were Leland at first.’ His tone is artificially light but he winces when she gives him her least impressed look. ‘Sorry. Only I thought I’d managed to hide it – I tried. All this time and I’m still caught underestimating you.’ He pats her cast, too gently for the vibration to jar her hand and when he speaks again it’s muted, his focus turning reflective. ‘You have this tendency to defy the odds time and again, even when the cause seems lost. I wanted to keep you from worrying about it, true, but... more than anything, I think that’s why I didn’t tell you.’

Michael’s wound so tight, she can hardly make herself breathe. ‘Tell me what?’

He’s quiet for another pause, clearly choosing his words with care.

‘It seemed- petty to worry about myself, when I had your example right there’ he says eventually. ‘You were so willing to throw yourself at what needed to be done, regardless of the consequences.’ His gaze goes distant – as if he’s watching something beyond Sickbay again, reliving something terrible until he blinks back to her here, now and understanding shadows his frown. ‘Also, it’s true that I did make a promise not to tell anyone and I haven’t. I wasn’t deliberately leaving you out.’

The knot of worry in her chest is back and it only loosens slightly at that. He’s been carrying whatever this is alone, and she’d rather he’d trusted _anyone_ rather than that – even if it couldn’t be her.

She makes her voice as persuasive as she knows how, which is still nowhere near as much as she’d like. ‘Surely the circumstances have changed? Whoever you made that promise to, they’ve been dead for nine hundred years.’

Unexpectedly Pike hesitates. ‘Actually I’m not sure. Time was- negotiable.’

Before she can ask, he shakes his head. ‘Michael, other promises aside… I meant it when I said you had enough to deal with; I didn’t want you to carry this truth on top of that. I promised myself that I would never tell you.’

She tries to keep the sting of that off her face; she suddenly misses standing, the way she can tuck her hands behind her back to centre all her uneasiness in regulation posture, but if she retreats, she’ll disrupt the moment and she can’t risk it, not when he’s clearly considering breaking the rule of silence he imposed on himself. ‘What truth is that, captain?’ she asks.

Something of her hurt must bleed through anyway because he looks at her, really seeing this time, eyes wide and it’s that instant that she sees the decision made, the way his shoulders straighten and his chin comes up. One hundred percent the Starfleet captain bracing himself for a tough negotiation. He’s going to be honest.

‘The truth is... that you weren’t leaving me behind in the past to a glorious future of admiralty and eventual retirement to a nice warm planet where no one hassled me daily to make the hard choices. That I couldn’t come with _Discovery_ even-’ He trips briefly, voice catching before he steadies it, looks at her with his shoulders curling in more defensive than she’s ever seen him. ‘Even if I wanted to.’

She looks at him for a long moment, the tired lines around his eyes, the shadow of unhappiness beneath a smile that trembles, unconvincing and she doesn’t mean her voice to come out plaintive but it scrapes out that way, pressed thin by the worry that’s akin to fear now.

‘Captain, what happened to you on Boreth?’

He touches the side of his face and his hand- his hand _shakes_. Even as the quiet drags out, she knows better than to speak; she’s said everything she can to persuade him and the decision now has to be his alone, even if she sits here all night. He’s held on to it for this long after all.

And then, in the sleeping hush of _Discovery_ at rest with the monitors humming a descant to the terrible, simple words, he tells her. About the vision he’d seen in the time crystal and Tenavik’s surety of his fate, about his decision to take it anyway in light of the threat to all sentient life. In soft, stumbling words he spells out his belief in his own inconsequentiality when set against the survival of the galaxy and how it was no one’s burden to bear but his own.

‘You didn’t need to wrestle with my problems on top of what you had to deal with, Michael,’ he finishes, voice gone hollow with the effort of holding it steady. ‘I didn’t intend to tell anyone; it wouldn’t make a difference. None of this is in any way your fault, you have to be clear on that. I made my own choice.’

Michael’s silent in the pause after he’s finished, aware of the tangle of her emotions but unsure how to begin unravelling it. That he’d gone through that, alone – that he’d carried the weight of that choice and led them through the battle with Control unwavering, the surety of his confidence their bulwark against despair – how does she begin to question that?

 _Try to convince your stupidly noble captain that his survival matters_ , Philippa mutters in her mind but that’s the wrong tack she’s sure; Pike’s already weighed himself against the galaxy and found the balance not in his favour. A selfish argument won’t work.

Instead, counterpoint and yet kin to Philippa’s unwavering hard sympathy, she thinks of Sarek’s voice. A half forgotten memory of when she tried to skip steps in her math he was helping her with as a child: _You cannot build the house that lasts if you do not first ensure you have the correct foundations_.

It’s back to logic, then.

‘If I may, captain,’ she asks, careful to keep her tone neutral, ‘would you permit me to ask some questions?’

Pike almost smiles, wry as if he expected it. ‘By all means. Gather your data but I warn you that the conclusions will be the same.’

Michael gives that last the consideration it deserves and ignores it. ‘You believe this future to be the only remaining path open to you, yes?’

‘Yes. Tenavik was very clear when I took the crystal that it set my fate inexorably on that course.’

‘And you trust him to have told you the truth?’

Pike blinks. ‘...Of course. What reason would he have to lie?’

Raising her gaze upward just short of an eye roll, Michael takes a moment to reflect on the novelty of wishing for more patience with Pike; usually it’s reserved for Spock playing the _you illogical humans_ card, or Philippa’s more trying Supreme Emperor flashbacks.

‘Captain,’ she says in the measured tone she’s been told soundlessly tacks _you are an idiot_ onto every word (Amanda says she learned it from Sarek, but Michael’s pretty sure Sarek refined it listening to Amanda talk to Vulcans who mistreated Spock), ‘why would you trust a Klingon you’d never met, whose sole purpose in allowing you access to the crystals was to assess the strength of your conviction and the nobility of your purpose? If the crystal had shown you a vision of yourself as Admiral, or being saved here in the future, or sipping plomeek tea on a pleasure beach on Risa, would that have told him anything about your worthiness to take it?’

Pike frowns. ‘His words had the ring of truth Michael, and from what I saw of their time manipulation, he would know. Besides I’m not Admiral, or on Risa, and I’m not likely to be now. Only the rescue would be true.’

‘At this precise moment, your vision hasn’t come true either,’ she points out. ‘Do you recognise the cadets in your future – do you think they could be on _Discovery_?’

His silence is the wariness of someone searching for the catch, expecting disappointment and Michael _aches;_ she knows that bleakness intimately. Before she can second guess herself she reaches with her good hand, stilling his restless fingers against her brace and tangling their hands together in a press of reassurance.

When he flashes her a startled look, she meets it with a steady one. _It’s okay_ , she hopes it says, _I’ve got this_ and perhaps it’s the surroundings – Sickbay always throws off their usual boundaries, lack of uniforms and fragile tempers and that time they’d been up to their elbows in blood together, assisting Dr Pollard during an emergency – but it feels natural to be sitting in the shaded darkness, holding hands. His doesn’t quite dwarf hers, palm broader but her fingers longer, warmth shared, and it’s familiar in a way that’s completely new.

Judging from his faintly perplexed expression, he’s noticing that too but at least it’s eased his visible unhappiness. After a moment he sighs.

‘No, they aren’t here – the uniforms were different, Starfleet but not _Discovery._ And they were too young, fresh out of the Academy if they’d even graduated.’

Michael lifts one, pointed eyebrow. ‘But now you’re _here_. No Academy, no Starfleet as far as we know. Close to a thousand years away from what the crystal showed you as a potential-’

‘As a _certain_ -’

‘As a _potential_ future, Captain.’ Michael squeezes his hand, gentle when his fingers tremble in hers. ‘I can prove it. I touched the crystal too, remember?’

Amusement lights his expression briefly. ‘I don’t remember but I guessed as much – in light of our situation I’ll skip the _I told you sos_ and ask what you saw. It was about the fight, wasn’t it? You had the look when _Discovery_ wouldn’t be destroyed.’

‘Yes sir. I saw the torpedo lodged in _Enterprise_ ’s hull during the fight. I saw-’ Breathing fails her momentarily but his hand grounds her, their shared warmth an anchor point against the sense-memory of her throat being crushed. Her voice stills comes out raw. ‘I saw Leland kill everyone on _Discovery_ ’s bridge, including me. Without mercy.’

‘I’m sorry you had to see that,’ Pike murmurs, but Michael shakes her head.

‘I’m glad I did. It allowed me to set in motion a new chain of events, events that led to me not being on the bridge when he walked in. The crystal showed me my worst possible future which meant I had a chance to _change_ it.’

Pike’s mouth sets stubborn, his _I’m facing down Leland on an obstreperous day_ look, an inherent refusal of the temptation. ‘But the torpedo hit the _Enterprise_. That came true-’

‘The vision I saw had a live torpedo, lights on, counting down. Changing events so we had more time on _Discovery_ or perhaps we accessed the Sphere data in a different way, I don’t know – but showing me which course of action not to follow changed that outcome. It allowed the Sphere data to integrate far enough to upgrade _Discovery_ ’s shields and deactivate the Section 31 torpedos.’ Michael’s sure of her reasoning now, determination burning beneath her outward calm; she lets her voice go pointed, watches it hit home. ‘That led to the _Enterprise_ drawing fire while we took no damage, meaning we stayed too close to cover you and you were pulled into the wormhole with us. And it let me warn Philippa to expect Leland to board so she was prepared with a contingency plan to contain him. I changed events because of what I saw and it meant that _no one died_.’

‘But you didn’t know that.’

And that- that’s new. She’s never heard that almost fragile tone from him before, the terrible weight of doubt back in the tired lines of his face.

Abruptly she’s furious, reason subsumed in an illogical urge to track that Klingon monk down and scream her rage. How _dare_ they take Pike’s shining conviction in a just universe and twist it into a whip to drive him to despair? All the power of time at hand and they couldn’t see the terrible abuse that it was?

She thinks of Ash suddenly, of his tentative smile before, of the harsh bite of Klingon in his throat after. Perhaps they could see the unfairness. Perhaps they simply didn’t care.

‘No, I didn’t know,’ she bites out. ‘But I took the chance at a better future. All of us did, when we travelled here,’

Indecision wars with refusal across Pike’s face, his thumb tracing pensive circles across her knuckles and then-

‘A chance isn’t enough,’ he says and it’s resigned, refusal winning out. ‘Even if I could believe Tenavik lied to me about it being set in stone then everything you did to avert the future you saw was just guesswork, and I can’t live my life second-guessing my every choice, Michael. I accepted my fate when I took the crystal. To spend what life I have left attempting to cheat that fate – a fate I do believe is inevitable – would lessen that life. Would lessen me.’ He squeezes her hand gently, even as something desolate shadows over his face. ‘I’m willing to follow my path.’

 _Delightfully predictable_ , the echo of Philippa says scornfully in Michael’s thoughts. This time, Michael can’t disagree.

‘And that’s how Tenavik knew for certain it was inevitable,’ she says, soft, watching the thread of hope versus horror war behind his eyes. She’s started wars and won them; whatever it takes, she will not let this one steal another captain from her. ‘I believe the crystals show us the worst possible outcome – those we will most instinctively reject, because otherwise how would the monks know who is worthy to take them? Tenavik tested your strength of purpose and by accepting your terrible end as the price, you proved that you were worthy. You _also_ proved that you were the kind of man who would make your own end a truth by simply walking toward it, head on. Unafraid.’

As if her words were a sucker punch his gaze immediately drops from hers, pulling inward on himself and dismayed, Michael wonders what she’s said wrong this time. Wanting to get this right doesn’t make her _good_ at it, not when the problems she’s trying to solve are people rather than science. She’d solved Spock but that took Amanda and forgiveness she can’t quite fathom and Spock laying out the way to Talos predictable as an equation; it doesn’t translate. She doesn’t have the math to solve what the Klingons did to Pike.

Then he speaks and her heart breaks.

‘I am afraid,’ he says simply. Almost matter of fact, except for the way his mouth trembles before he firms it. ‘I was afraid when I touched the crystal, I was afraid when I took it, and I’m afraid now that if I let myself think, hey maybe I don’t have to be afraid because it won’t happen, I won’t be able to handle it when it does. Or that in avoiding it, I may cause something worse.’ He looks up at her and his eyes are very bright in the half-light, reflected lights of the monitors gleaming over the tired lines. ‘You were ready to give up everything to go alone with _Discovery_. If my whole life until this point was a path leading me to the moment I could lend you the hand you needed to save the galaxy then well, that’s worth it. I’ll pay that price.’

Michael opens her mouth only to find a void where her voice should be. All her careful arguments disintegrate; for an instant she’s weightless again in the timestream, the lights of Sickbay blurred to sparks when her eyes fill.

She thought he knew her, as well as anyone outside her immediate family and he has the _audacity_ -

‘You think I’d _want_ that _?_ ’ Without conscious thought correlated to movement she’s on her feet, backing away with the memory of his warmth fading from her palm as she clenches her fist. ‘I told you about Philippa and you still think I wouldn’t move the universe itself to come back for you?’

He’s staring at her, hand half-lifted as if he’d like to reach for her. When she backs up another step, a wince crosses his face.

‘That’s the point,’ he admits and it’s the same tone of unshakeable faith as when he’d asked if she’d brought them to the future. ‘I know you would. Why do you think I didn’t tell you nine hundred years ago? No matter how afraid I am for myself, I was more afraid that any concern you had for me may have led to you deviating from your true purpose.’

When he tries a smile, it’s barely an unhappy twist of his mouth. ‘You already saved my life, Michael. Let me save yours.’

‘Those two things are not mutually exclusive. You’re already here in the future, we’re safe. Your fate is different now.’

‘Are you sure of that?’ He asks it quietly, without censure. ‘You need to go back at some point to set the signals we know about, and the two we’ve yet to uncover. Time is getting somewhat- fluid. Your mother herself told me that time is a living thing, with a will to correct the course of events.’

He seems to realise his hand is still half-extended and pulls it back, fingers in a loose, almost defensive curl against his chest and that, combined with the raw edge of his next words, hurt so much that she almost reaches out herself. ‘Please don’t blame yourself for any of this, Michael. That was never my intention. You don’t hold any responsibility in this.’

She’s shaking, she realises distantly – she thinks they both might be. There’s a wire-tight tension in opening themselves up like this and she’s grateful suddenly for the quiet, and the dark. In uniform, barriers up, they might never have done this and she would’ve watched him leave one day, comforted in that glorious future of admiralty and peaceful retirement until they perhaps found some old Starfleet records almost a thousand years later that told her it had all been a lie.

‘If it’d been me,’ she says, stumbling. ‘If I had told you I was going to the future to save the entire galaxy, that I hoped to find my mother and live happily ever after but you later found out that I _knew_ I wouldn’t survive the trip – would you listen, if Spock told you not to feel responsible?’

The silence drags out for an achingly long moment. When he looks away from her, it’s answer enough.

‘No,’ he murmurs. ‘I’d never forgive myself.’

‘Then _stay_.’ She almost adds _with me_ before she swallows it; she isn’t sure that’s a piece she can play. ‘Accept that we’ve changed the future because you made it here. Going back now, to walk into that… that’s not fate, that’s a _choice_.’

He doesn’t flinch, but there’s a coiled tension in his shoulders that suggests he’d like to. ‘And if those cadets all die because I’m not where I’m supposed to be?’

‘Then I have a time suit, _I’ll_ -’

Too late she bites off her mistake, numb with the realisation of her misstep. Ruefully, he gives her a smile that’s only tired.

‘And there you have it. In avoiding my own fate, I’ll likely get you killed. That’s not a trade I’ll make.’

‘There are _other ways_ ,’ she says but she’s surrendered the high ground and her voice comes out thin with despair. She can’t keep him here against his will and he won’t stay voluntarily, given the choice. They _have_ to go back to set the signals to avoid breaking the timeline and once they’ve worked out how to do that, on one of the trips one day, he’ll slip quietly back to Starfleet and everything that’s waiting for him.

Still, she _refuses_ -

‘At least stay with us as long as you can,’ she insists. ‘Saru’s suggestion was that if we have to wait that we continue with the plan to build a base on Terralysium, so we have a safe bolt hole if we need it – you integrated better than any of us last time. I suspect we won’t adequately refine the time jumps until my mother gets here, that’s over two years-’

‘Two years in which you’re hoping to change my mind?’ He sighs. ‘I understand the impulse, truly I do. But Michael, if you’re hoping I’ll spend two plus years with you – all of you – and enjoy it so much that I won’t want to leave… well you’re most likely right. But I cannot see myself avoiding my fate in the longer term, not when I took the time crystal and accepted the cost. To allow myself to believe in a reprieve now...’ For the first time in a while she sees his composure crack, tears gleaming before he looks down to blink them away. ‘I don’t know if I could bear it, to have hope taken away a second time. Please don’t ask that of me.’

That last is fragile again and it’s a plea she can’t refuse. He won’t stay, not while he believes he has no other options and she’s _angry_ at him for doing this to her, for taking away the tentative, fresh-grown hope she’d felt take root when she realised that he was here – that they might get to keep him after all. That Stamets and Tilly got their miracles and just maybe this time, she might.

She boxes that hope up, closes the lid before tucking it out of reach and weariness washes over her in the wake. There’s no escaping that she’s bitter for her own sake and his, refusing acceptance of his wishes and so, so sure that she’s right. That she can fix everything with her actions if she ignores everything he’s asking of her.

It’s Philippa all over again, and she aches as her certainty hollows into grief.

‘Fine,’ she says, voice ragged. When she steps back towards the bed, her knees threaten to buckle and when he reaches out to steady her she relinquishes her hand easily, fingers twined. ‘I won’t hound you to change your mind, I won’t argue. I won’t even tell the others if you would prefer this kept between us, although if Spock finds out on his own then I also won’t stand in the way when he nerve pinches you and tosses you in the brig until you see sense.’

His mouth quirks. ‘Fair.’

‘But,’ she adds, ‘you said you don’t want to lessen yourself – so don’t. We have over two years to wait for my mother, longer probably before we find the way back to set the signals.’ She allows her voice to crack into something pleading. ‘Come and live with us, even for a little while. Take this… sabbatical as the gift it is and make the most of it, captain.’

As if she’s lifted a weight threatening to crush them both, something lighter flits across his expression. ‘Chris.’

She blinks. ‘What?’

‘Chris,’ he repeats and squeezes her hand, apparently enjoying her puzzlement. ‘I gave up the captaincy remember? If we intend to live for any length of time on Terralysium, we can’t have captains and commanders; it’ll sound ridiculous. You should call me Chris.’

She tests the shape of it, holding it on her tongue for a moment as the precursor to something new that it is. ‘Chris,’ she repeats, watching his slow smile – then she frowns. ‘Wait, does this mean that you agree to my terms?’

‘Cheating the future – past – whatever – is not a negotiation, Michael,’ he sighs but the smile playing over his mouth is genuine. ‘Yes I’ll come with you, not that I have many options.’ He pauses contemplatively. ‘Other than running away to become a future space pirate I suppose and as tempting as that sounds, I’m not sure I’d be any good at demanding people hand over their cargo in a suitably threatening fashion. I couldn’t shake the memory of my mother scolding me for being impolite.’

‘You can always charm them out of their possessions,’ Michael says dryly and he laughs.

‘I’d be a very poor pirate if I relied on charm.’

 _You’d be a very successful pirate_ , she thinks but keeps it to herself. Instead she opens her mouth to ask him what he intends to do about the vacant captaincy –

To have the first syllable dissolve into a jaw-cracking yawn. Only his hand in hers keeps her from stumbling as she sways on her feet.

‘I’m keeping you up,’ he says, contrite lines creasing at the corners of his eyes. ‘Get some sleep Michael. Any decisions we have to make will keep ‘til morning.’

‘No mornings in space,’ she says muzzily. As if the yawn unlocked something, it’s getting harder to keep her eyes open. ‘We’re having a briefing in- ten hours?’

‘Then you can sleep for nine and a half of those.’ He uses his grip on her hand to turn her, propel her gently back toward her own biobed. ‘Go on.’

She takes two steps, then hesitates to glance back. He’s still sitting up watching her. When their eyes meet, his smile quirks a question and she knows she’s frowning, struggling to form coherent words from the sudden roil of fear that shivers her all over, something tugging for her attention without quite being ready to form into a thought.

Finally she says, too tired to make it less raw: ‘Don’t go anywhere without telling me – I mean waking me.’ She swallows, something fragile fluttering in her chest when his expression goes startled and open. ‘Please.’

‘You have my word,’ he says softly. ‘I’ll see you in the morning, Michael.’

She feels his gaze on her all the way back to her own bed, feather-pressure of it between her shoulderblades but when she glances back he’s already lying back down with his eyes closed. After a brief hesitation she lies down on her side facing him.

It’s only practical, she tells herself; it allows her to rest the bulky cast on the bed without straining her shoulder. It has nothing to do with watching him through her eyelashes, trying to pin down the elusive thought waving for her attention through the haze of tiredness. It’s a niggle that keeps her from sleep even as his breathing levels out and she allows it to ease the tension still lingering in her every muscle, listening to the steady pattern and closing her hand around the sense-memory of his fingers in hers, warm and sure.

She’s saved him but she’s somehow lost him at the same time. He’s right there breathing steadily for now, but one day she’s going to reach for his hand and, like Philippa, like Lorca – he’s not going to be there to reach back.

The thought that’s fluttering at the edges of wakefulness finally steadies and clears, dawning on her like the answer to a math problem and like that, once she sees it, it’s simple:

 _No_.

She’s all but promised him that she won’t travel back to save him directly, which rules it out as an option. That leaves changing his mind, and once he’s decided that a path is the right one, he won’t deviate from it without good reason. That reason needs to be evidence based, neatly-plotted math showing him that what he intended to do wasn’t the best course after all in clear strokes.

The certainty settles into her bones, conviction so strong, she feels weighted with it, pressed into the mattress.

All she has to do is find that evidence to prove to him that he doesn’t have to go back, that it won’t harm anyone else. He may not be hers – theirs – to keep, but he isn’t the universe’s to rip away either. Two years, four months is more time than she had with Philippa; this time, knowing what she knows now, she won’t fail and and as she finally gives in to sleep, letting herself drift, one last thought repeats in the steady rhythm of his breathing:

Time may be a living thing with a will.

But so is she.

**Author's Note:**

> I originally assumed Pollard stayed in the past but on a rewatch the finale seemed to show her still in Disco's Sickbay so I took the leap that a few more people outside the core group also chose to stay on board.


End file.
